Harriet the Spy is a novel for children by Louise Fitzhugh, published in 1974.

It was made into a 1996 film for Nickelodeon starring Michelle Trachtenberg.

The movie

Harriet the Spy is about Harriet Welsch (Michelle Trachtenberg), an eleven-year-old girl aspiring to be a spy. She has a notebook and snoops around her neighbourhood. Her best friends are Janie and Sport. Janie is big on science, and Sport is a very mature boy as his father is a starving artist of a writer. Marion Hawthorne, the rich, popular girl in class is also somewhat of a bully.

One afternoon, when the children play in a park afterschool, Marion and her clique snag Harriet’s notebook and read all her secret thoughts to everyone. What’s written in the book is hurtful for all of Harriet’s friends. They ostracize her and tease her from this point, and Harriet retreats into anger and gains revenge on them.

Harriet also has a nanny Golly (Rosie O' Donnell), who gets fired in the course of the movie.

Utterly lonely, Harriet becomes high on tantrums; her parents confiscate her notebook and start making her see a psychologist. One day Harriet runs into Golly and Golly gives her some advice. Harriet aspires to become the writer of the class newspaper, and she does. She makes amends to her former friends through her writing, and all is well again.

Credits

Directed by: Bronwen Hughes

Written by: Louise Fitzhugh (novel), Greg Taylor and Julie Talen (adaptation), Douglas Petrie and Theresa Rebeck (screenplay)

Cast: Michelle Trachtenberg, Gregory Smith, Vanessa Lee Chester , Rosie O'Donnell, J. Smith-Cameron , Robert Joy, Charlotte Sullivan