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Rating: 
Summary: Great Characters
Review: "Harriet the Spy" is undoubtedly one of the best children books ever...the sequel ""Sport" however was a disappointment and did not match HTS fine standards. I therefore hesitated before starting to read "the Long Secret", but this time I was not sorry (the right reading order should have been HTS, The Long Secret and then Sport).
The long secret holds the same kind of eccentric, incredible characters as HTS. Especially lovable are Bible loving Jessie Mae, her fat brother Norman and their incredible Mama Jenkins (including their outstanding way of speech - supposedly Mississippi style). The Long Secret also gives us a special look on Harriet as she looks "from the side". Once you see Harriet through Beth Ellen eyes, you also see all her flaws, although she remains one of a kind ...; This "round look", the ability to portray a character as a real human person with qualities and flaws is one of the writer's remarkable abilities.
The heroine of this book is Beth Ellen, a shy timid person who does not talk or act a lot and is usually a very passive friend to Harriet. Beth Ellen undergoes an inner growth through this book and Harriet too learns to regard her friend in a different light.
Not all of my questions were answered at the end of The Long Secret and the ending seems a little too simplistic to accept, but all in all a fun read.
Rating: 
Summary: The Messy Secret
Review: First off: "The Long Secret" is no "Harriet the Spy." Don't get me wrong. It's a good book. Louise Fitzhugh is a pretty amazing writer and there is no doubt she did some interesting things with the form. She does children like nobody else. You have to read her books to understand that. No. The thing is. "The Long Secret" is a little like that period just prior to adolescence. You're not a kid and you're not a teenager. You're lodged, briefly, in a place that no-one has found a name for yet. It's neither a good place or a bad place, either. It's just a sort of neither-one-thing-or-another place. "The Long Secret" is a book that cannot make up its mind quite what it wants to be. "The Long Secret" is, to all intents and purposes, a sequel to "Harriet the Spy" (and as such a book I put off reading for YEARS because, let's face it, what can live up to "Harriet the Spy"? - it's like making a sequel to "Casablanca" or something). Harriet is spending the summer at the beach with her best friend Beth Ellen. Somebody is leaving mysterious notes around - notes that act like mean fortune cookies telling people what they are really like, notes that appear to be paraphrasing the Bible (the mean fortune cookie almanac). Harriet, as you would expect, is on the case. Or she would be, if that was the story that "The Long Secret" wanted to tell. As often as not, we find ourselves watching Harriet ride home from Beth Ellen's front porch. Beth Ellen lives with her rich grandma. Her mother lives in Europe and can't be fussed raising a child. Tagging along with Harriet on the beach-version of her spy route, Beth Ellen looks in through the windows of a bar and watches a piano player called Bunny. She also finds herself caught up with a religious family, in particular a little girl called Jessie Mae (who Beth Ellen maybe likes more than Harriet for a little while, maybe, maybe, she's not sure). "The Long Secret" is Beth Ellen's book. The association with Harriet M Welsh does her a disservice because you long to compare this book with Harriet's book and the two are just fundamentally different fish. Mix the return of Beth Ellen's mother from Europe, Harriet's ruminations on God and faith, a kid called Norman who can't park cars and an old guy called The Preacher who lives in a shack in the woods and you start to feel like: enough already. There are lots of good things here. The problem is that all of the good things feel like they have emerged from three other slightly more sensible books.
Rating: 
Summary: I LAUGHED UNTIL IT HURT!
Review: I got this book when I was a child and I thought it was a scream! I actually laughed so hard it hurt! Beth-Ellen, Harriet's shy and retiring friend is the perfect foil to the outspoken, brash, wonderfully assertive Harriet of Harriet the Spy fame. Both girls have summer homes in Water Mill, Long Island, their families' retreat from Manhattan when school gets out. Beth-Ellen lives with her kindly grandmother, who has some rather neanderthal ideas about imparting information concerning puberty, but who is a nice sort after all. Harriet has not put down her pen and notebook. Seems that somebody else has taken up writing that summer. Quotes from the Bible and parodies of Scripture are seen throughout the Water Mill community. Naturally suspicion turns to a summer girl named Jessie who aspires to be a preacher when she grows up. Chock full of Biblical knowledge, Jessie has a morbidly obese mother and twin brother and a cute preschool sister. There is no mention of a father. Beth-Ellen, on the other hand becomes reacquainted with her mother. Seems that Beth-Ellen's mother was a society lady, preferring parties and travel to raising a child. Beth-Ellen's natural father left some years earlier. The reunion is a bust. Beth-Ellen's mother, Zeeney, is just as flighty and superficial as ever. Her stepfather just says "hup" and loves martinis. They try to make Beth-Ellen over, straightening her hair and choosing her clothes and insisting that she leave her grandmother and come with them. Beth-Ellen refuses, wins her case and Harriet cracks THE case -- the identity of the Secret Writer! This book is a riot!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book, But Very Disturbing
Review: I think if a child is going to read this book, that the parent shoud read it either first, or along with the child, and discuss it with the child. I LOVED Harriet the Spy, both as a child, as an adult. When I bought Harriet the Spy for my dauughter, I saw this book, and bought it, too, sight unseen. I have just read it, and am quite surprised that the topics discussed in this book could have been published in 1965, when society was more conservative today. I did not like the chapter on Janie having her period. Not that I object to the subject being discussed--I just didn't like the presentation of it in this book. I think what I found disturbing about this book are the particular identity issues it brings up. Maybe it touched too closely on some things I found disturbing as a child. I was shocked with the actions and behavior of some of the adult characters in the book--I didn't like it at all. However, I will concede that by the end of the book, the behavior of the characters I didn't like was completely discredited, and Beth Ellen REALLY ends up growing as a person in this book--that's what this book is all about. I was VERY surprised how the mystery of the notes ended--I didn't expect it, and that was excellent. I think Louise Fitzhugh tied up all the ends very well, and makes some excellent moral points for kids to think about. Another issue in this book is the extreme rudeness of Harriet's behavior--her behavior in the first book didn't bother me at all--but in this book it did. At least her extreme rudeness is pointed out to kids for them to think about (I'm not talking about her spying on people--I'm talking about the way she SPEAKS to people, and the way she treats her FRIENDS). Even though the book disturbed me, I felt it WAS well-written, and had some important points to make. I would recommend it, but would suggest parents read it, too, and discuss it with their children.
Rating:
Summary: A lovely book that stands apart from "Harriet"
Review: If you want to keep your kids dumb, silly, sticky-faced, and ready to swallow everything our current corporate-media society is ready to throw down their throats for the rest of their lives, don't let them read this book -- get them Helen Ericson's soulless Harriet Spies Again instead. Would you let your children read Shakespeare? Would you let them read Dickens? Hubert Selby? Charles Bukowski? Would you let them listen to Lennon or Lou Reed or Dylan or Pink Floyd? Would you let them eat organic brussels sprouts? Would you take them to Bryce Canyon? Would you give them a camera? Would you let them close the bedroom door? Would you let them cry without giving them "something to really cry about"? Would you turn off the TV? Do I sound like a pseudointellectual yet? It's a seriously great book. I'm a cranky thirty-year-old guy who cries as I root for Beth Ellen Hansen to find herself. I find Harriet M. Welsch even funnier as a supporting character than I did in her starring role. I long for a wise Rodger Welsch to set me straight without spoiling my innocence, and I gape in awe at Mrs. Welsch's wit in the face of the appalling Zeeney. Thank you, Grandmother, for not making me go to Paris. Thank you, Janie, for dispelling my superstitions. And thank you, Harriet, for busting me! Thank you, LOUISE! Rest in peace -- since ghosts evidently do not have the power to possess living writers.
Rating:
Summary: A great read, a must read
Review: In third grade my third grade teacher decided to read us the beginning of "Harriet the Spy." While she got as far as when Janie tells Harriet about dancing school, she had the sequel, "The Long Secret", in the book corner of our classroom, and only one person knew about it: me. Since that day in third grade when I noticed the copy, I've read it a hundred times if not more. Who can't resist the rough and tumble Jenkins family or Zeeney or Wallace ("Hup!"). Or Bunny or Agatha or Harriet or Beth Ellen? Your life will be changed after reading it. Trust me.
Rating:
Summary: A lovely book that stands apart from "Harriet"
Review: There's no question that this is a "sequel" to Harriet the Spy, but a fan of the first book shouldn't go in expecting more of the same. The heart of this book is not Harriet but Beth Ellen, and her shyer, more introspective nature give The Long Secret a completely different vibe. The result is a touching, beautifully observed book about one of the most challenging times of life: the point where you're just emerging from childhood and start seeing adults -- and yourself -- more clearly. It's a very funny book and a compelling mystery, but it's not just fun and games. I found the emotional currents of this book quite intense as a child, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book
Review: This is truly an excellent book, and a great sequel to "Harriet the Spy." I read this in 2nd grade, almost immediatley after I finished "Harriet the Spy" and loved it. I wish Louise Fitzhugh would have written more. Louise Fitzhugh is a great author, and her books will always be classics in my library.
Rating:
Summary: Beth Ellen is very real
Review: This was my favorite Young Adult novel. I had a very battered, much-loved copy which I read over and over throughout junior high. Contrary to the synopsis above, this book was not really about Harriet (although she is present). The main character is her friend Beth Ellen who is very shy, wants to be an artist, and must deal with the arrival of her flighty, glamorous(?) mother whom she has never known. A wonderful story for anyone who has known shyness
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