Harriet the Spy

Eleven-year-old aspiring spy and writer Harriet M. Welsch lives a privileged life in New York City with her parents, Violetta and Ben, and her nanny, Catherine "Ole Golly", in whom she confides. Harriet and her best friends, Simon "Sport" Rocque and Janie Gibbs, are enemies with a snobby classmate, editor of the sixth-grade newspaper, bully, and class president Marion Hawthorne. After school, Marion discovers Harriet's private spy notebook. She begins reading aloud Harriet's comments about her friends and peers, such as how she suspects Janie will grow up to be "a total nutcase" and criticizing Sport's father's low earnings. Sport and Janie shun Harriet, and her classmates create a "spy-catcher" club to torment her. Harriet responds, slapping Marion in the face, and flees from the school. She exacts revenge in several ways: by exposing that Marion's father left their family for his secretary, by cutting off a chunk of Laura's hair, by sabotaging Janie's science experiment, and by humiliating Sport with a picture of him in a maid's outfit.