Banned Books Week: Day 6: I’ll be finked

That night at dinner everything was going along as usual, that is, Mr. and Mrs. Welsch were having an interminable, rambling conversation about nothing in particular while Harriet watched it all like a tennis match, when suddenly Harriet leaped to her feet as though she had just then remembered, and screamed, “I’ll be damned if I’ll go to dancing school.”

“Harriet!” Mrs. Welsch was appalled. “How dare you use words like that at the table.”

“Or any other place, dear,” interjected Mr. Welsch calmly.

“All right, I’ll be FINKED if I’ll go to dancing school.” Harriet stood and screamed this solidly. She was throwing a fit. She only threw fits as a last resort, so that even as she did it she had a tiny feeling in the back of her brain that she had already lost. She wouldn’t, however, have it said that she went down without a try.

“Where in the world did you learn a word like that?” Mrs. Welsch’s eyebrows were raised almost to her hairline.

“It’s not a verb, anyway,” said Mr. Welsch. They both sat looking at Harriet as thought she were a curiosity put on television to entertain them.

“I will not, I will not, I will not,” shouted Harriet at the top of her lungs. She wasn’t getting the right reaction. Something was wrong.

from the beginning of Chapter 5, Harriet the Spy, written and illustrated by Louise Fitzhugh (Harper & Row, 1964)

* * * *

I’ve been reading aloud Harriet the Spy to the kids (part of our Thanksgiving prep program), and it’s a great hit so far, even though they have yet to taste an egg cream and though many of the details of Harriet’s life are as peculiar to them as to me, back in 1974 in an Upper West Side apartment — a brownstone, a nanny, maid, and a cook, and spending all summer away in a country house. Harriet is also on the list of banned and challenged books; apparently it was banned from schools after its publication in 1964, though I can’t find anything details, and it was challenged in 1983 in Ohio school libraries because it “teaches children to lie, spy, back-talk, and curse.”

It’s obvious from the wording of the challenge that the adult(s) lodging it either didn’t read the book or didn’t understand it. I can’t imagine any children, including my three now or my 10-year-old self, taking away as the important lessons of the book how to spy, back-talk, and curse; though there is the lesson that, yes, sometimes you have to lie, because, as Ole Golly explains, “Otherwise you are going to lose a friend. Little lies that make people feel better are not bad, like thanking someone for a meal they made even if you hated it … But to yourself you must always tell the truth”. Any adult who really reads Harriet the Spy will know, as any child does, what the book’s true lessons are:

“It won’t do you a bit of good to know everything if you don’t do anything with it”

“Good manners are very important, particularly in the morning”

Enjoy afternoon tea, preferably with cake and milk

“When people don’t do anything they don’t think anything, and when they don’t think anything there’s nothing to think about them”

Write, and remember that “writing is to put love in the world, not to use against your friends”

“People who love their work love life”

You can change your mind

Guard your memories and love them, but don’t get in them and lie down

Sometimes you just have to give in, to dancing lessons and being an onion

Life is a great mystery

Read.

Dostoievsky is good stuff, especially “If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day.”

When you are eleven years old, you’re old enough to get busy at growing up to be the person you want to be

Don’t count your eggs before they vote for you

You will get through the rough patches and have a nice life