Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Is it wrong to do a boozy review of a children’s book? Well, this review is not for children, and as it turns out, the book is a delightful read for adults as well as kids.
I hadn’t read it in a few decades, but somebody just mentioned it to me and I picked it up again. Let me tell you: Reading Harriet the Spy as an adult is like watching Rocky and Bullwinkle as an adult. You realize that 90 percent of it got right past you when you were a kid.
This book is smart, funny, sarcastic, dark, weird, and so very brave. Also, it’s set in a New York of the not-so-distant past that I am so fascinated with. As a kid, I missed just about all of that–or I forgot it. I’m so glad I read it again. I am now forcing it on every kid I know.
But enough about the kids. As an adult reading Harriet the Spy, what shall we have to drink?
I’m going to recommend something fun, lighthearted, easy, and yet surprisingly satisfying, with the most tenuous connection to spies.
I speak, my friends, of the Moscow Mule. (Moscow makes you think of spies, doesn’t it? Sort of?)
It’s the easiest drink in the world to make. Just fill a glass with ice, squeeze a good-sized wedge of lime into the glass, and either drop that lime in the glass or garnish with another, better-looking slice of lime if you wish.
Now add 1.5 ounces of vodka. Don’t get cheap, rotgut vodka, but don’t pay a fortune for a fancy bottle and an expensive ad campaign, either. I like Tito’s from Austin quite a bit.
Now top it off with a good (non-alcoholic) ginger beer like Reed’s. Not ginger ale. Give it a good, vigorous stir to get the vodka moving.
That’s it! That’s the whole drink. It’s bubbly, it’s refreshing, it goes down easy. Put a bendy straw in it. Drink it in a hammock while you read Harriet in paperback and laugh out loud.