The Istoriaphile’s Corner

Every kid needs to have role models.  They show us what to do.  Our parents are great but they’re grown-ups with lives we kids can’t fathom.  The same thing goes for teachers.  Kids our own age are too close and smaller kids look up to us.  So, we look for role models among the kids a bit older and cooler than we are.  We follow them around and copy their ways hoping some of their aura will rub off on us.  Of course, my first role model came from a book.  I’m sure my Mom would have preferred I pick a real person or at least a heroine she could understand, like Mary Lennox.  Instead, I found a precocious, formidable loner and claimed her as my ideal.  I didn’t know where my life was going until I met Harriet the Spy. If your recollection of this eleven-year wonder is limited to the movies, you need to pick up the book.   Harriet is nobody’s darling; she’s a curmudgeon with eyeglass frames and a notebook.  To say she’s focused doesn’t begin to describe her; single-minded and blunt come closer.  Harriet has a single ambition in life, to become a writer.  She knows…