To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of two children, sister Scout and brother Jem, and their childhood during three years in the midst of the Great Depression. Scout and Jem spend most of their summers with their summer-neighbor, Dill, making up plays and spying on the town recluse, Boo Radley. During the school year (minus Dill, who goes back home to Mississippi), Scout finds herself in trouble one too many times and struggles with the concept of being a lady, especially when all she wants to do is wear overalls and beat up her classmates.

Then everything changes one fall.... Scout and Jem's father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer in their town of Maycomb, Alabama, is appointed to the defense of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman (although not of the highest caliber), Mayella Ewell. The fact of this case rocks the town of Maycomb, and with Scout and Jem feeling the brunt of their classmates ridicule when they realize Atticus is on Tom's side.

I was simply floored while reading this novel. I wasn't expecting a "classic" to be so readable. Now I know what I've been missing! To Kill a Mockingbird is a piece of our American history that depicts racism and prejudice, childhood innocence, and the perseverence of a man who risked it all to stand up for what he believed in. Wonderful portrayal and one I will read again.


This Book Deserves 6 *!   March 15, 2000
 77 out of 89 found this review helpful

This classic should be made required reading for every person in every culture and in every country. If only everyone would read it, and truly understand, identify with and 'learn' from the story and the message found within its pages, I believe the world would be a happier and peaceful place to live in for all.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" is a 'rich' and compelling story set in 1930s Alabama. It's a story about the purity and innocence of children, about justice (or the lack of it), racism, hypocrisy, human compassion, trust and love (all issues we can relate to) told from the experiences and perspectives of a small child (Scout).

The writing is wonderfully beautiful and charming. You'll fall in love with the depth of inner beauty and innocence found in the 2 children (Jem, and especially his sister, Scout/Jean Louis). You'll find yourself rooting passionately for their father (Atticus Finch) to win his case when he chooses to defend a black man on trial for life, despite much social pressure on Finch to give up the case and veiled threats against him and his family. Watch for the part where Finch cross-examines the "victim" (a white girl who accuses the black man of rape) and during his closing speech. Both are excellent courtroom drama (the best I've come across) and they also reveal a lot of the (ugly) truth behind the case.

Atticus Finch's sense of justice, perseverence and fighting spirit (the way he stood his ground) are most inspiring and touching. Based on what he believes in, he knows he must "do the right thing", all the more since he has 2 young children who look up to him for guidance on the difference between right and wrong.

I also loved reading the precious scenes involving Atticus and his children - Atticus is really a "beautiful" person and a perfect role-model of a dad - at once loving and understanding and patience and fair.

And what about the mysterious recluse, Arthur "Boo" Radley who hasn't left his house in years and has become some sort of a terrifying yet intriguing "legend" among the neighbourhood children? Is he really the madman or evil spirit that the children believe him to be?

This book (and another winner, "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt) should rank highly in everyone's list of must-reads. What a true gem! Read it and be charmed.


"Lawyers Were Children Once Too": To Kill a Mockingbird   July 28, 2002
 45 out of 48 found this review helpful

Oddly, I'd never read To Kill a Mockingbird as a high school student. Nor had I ever seen the famous film with Gregory Peck. Fortunately, I also avoided learning the entire plot through cultural osmosis. Sure, I knew who Boo Radley was-- didn't I? Atticus Finch... yeah, I know who that is... right?

Boy, was I wrong. Last week I finally decided it'd been long enough, and I sank into Harper Lee's only novel with high expectations. And I was certainly not disappointed. With its slow, warm and evocative opening chapters, Mockingbird starts off like a sulty summer day in the South. Lee depicts a South of "whistling bob white," biscuits and warm milk, and ladies who on the hottest days bathe twice by noon and then douse themselves in lavender-smelling powder.

Jean-Louise Finch, better known as Scout, narrates the story with the keen eye of an adult looking back on a childhood rich with incidents that shaped who she has become. Scout reminded me of some of Carson McCullers's heroines (Member of the Wedding, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter), but without the morbid loneliness and heartbreak. Scout might be described as a tomboy, but that would be doing her a disservice. Her adventures with her older brother Jem, and their dimunitive friend Dill (real name: Charles Baker Harris. "Your name's longer'n you are," Jem points out) evoke the timeless place of childhood.

As for Atticus Finch, what can one say about a father who seems to embody the greatest of virtues? He is tolerant, patient, kind, and understanding. He does not meddle with his children's affairs, he speaks to them as fellow adults (he allows them to call him "Atticus"), and his skill as a lawyer is legendary. Lee presents Atticus in a tough and sensitive manner, so that his believability is paramount.

The other characters in the book are also depicted with great skill: Aunt Alexandra, bane of Scout's existence; Miss Maudie, who gives as good as she gets when harassed by intolerant neighbors; Calpurnia, the ever-present black maid who has as much a hand in Jem and Scout's well-being as Atticus; and of course the Ewells, whose poverty and ignorance help set the plot in motion.

Harper Lee has written a wonderful book that pulses with life, with compassion, and easy good humor. Watching Atticus face down an angry mob set on lynching a black man, or racing with Jem as he escapes gunshots from the Radley house, or sitting with Scout as she forced to join her aunt's church lady reception, or taking that long midnight walk with Jem and Scout, is pure joy; these are scenes that reverberate in the reader's mind and surely in the minds of several generations of readers. I'm glad I can now say I'm one of them.


What a read!   April 1, 2001
 33 out of 37 found this review helpful

In a recent writing assignment, my son noted:

My mom chose Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird as our family book club's March book. I flipped through, saw the number of pages, and thought, "Boring!" Later that night, I read the first page and discovered that the main character's brother was about my age and wanted to play football and own an air rifle. Then, a few days later, I continued reading and even though I found the writing a little "fancy," I was finally able to find the beauty of Lee's book - it's a pretty "grown-up" story, but it's seen through the eyes of kids like me. That makes hard subjects easier to understand, which makes the book so much more interesting.

The novel is told from a young girl's perspective. Because the theme of racism, the subject of rape, and the idea of injustice are a little "over the top" - even for bright readers -Lee chose a young narrator to tell the story of a black man falsely accused of raping a young white woman and one man's fight to free him. If the story had been told by an adult, readers would have to suffer through the unnecessary chit-chat, opinions, and worries of that perspective. Seeing Maycomb County through Scout's innocent eyes, however, prevents this "masterpiece of American literature" from being an "I-had-to-read-it" sort of book.

Scout, her brother Jem, and their father form one of many families of Maycomb County, Alabama. In that southern state during the Great Depression, "[t]here was no hurry for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy, and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County." As the novel begins, Scout is six and about to start school, where she will be criticized for coming to class already knowing how to read and write. Her young teacher scolds Scout: "Now you tell your father not to teach you anymore. It's best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undo the damage." (p. 17) Jem, a fifth-grader, allows his sister to join him in many of his adventures, including his plans with Dill to make Boo Radley come out. But he thinks Scout "is getting more like a girl every day." (p. 52) The children's father, Atticus Finch, is a state legislator and one of the county's leading lawyers. He is selected to defend Tom Robinson, a Negro accused of rape.

Racism still exists today, but the problems don't compare to those described in To Kill a Mocking Bird. The main problem seems to be that Negroes are considered the least human of four kinds of people. As Jem tells Scout, "There's four kinds of folks in the world. There's the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there's the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes." (p. 226) To make the point about Negroes being somehow less important than other folks, the author tells Tom's story. He is a Negro whose left arm is stripped of muscle from a childhood accident. He stops to help nineteen-year-old Mayella Ewell with several chores because, as Tom admits at his trial, "I felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more'n the rest of `em" - referring to her family, who gathers their supplies from the nearby dump and whose father is a drunkard who beats them. When Bob Ewell catches his daughter hugging the black man, he accuses Tom of raping Mayella to save their family from disgrace. "And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to `feel sorry' for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people's." (p. 204) Atticus Finch does his best to make Tom a free man. His efforts, though, only buy more time from the jury, which still returns a guilty verdict. Unlike her brother, Scout believes that "there's just one kind of folks. Folks." But Tom still ends up dead - shot as he tries to escape from punishment for a crime he did not (could not) commit. To Kill a Mockingbird could be a pretty "heavy" book for young readers if it only concentrated on racism, rape, and Atticus Finch's unsuccessful attempt to free an innocent man. So Lee combines the story of Tom Robinson with the mythology surrounding the inscrutable Mr. Arthur Radley, whom Jem, Scout, and their summertime friend Dill call Boo Radley. One story about Boo is that he stabbed his father with scissors while cutting newspapers for his scrapbook. Another story has Boo scratching neighbors' door screens. Yet another says that he eats squirrels. Kids love creepy stories, and the antics of the three friends as they try to make Boo come out of his house give the novel light and humor.

Although I had a rough time "getting into" To Kill a Mockingbird, when I finally did I was surprised by how good it was. By the way, the book has such a cool title. I didn't understand it at all when I began the book. Then, in chapter 10, I realized where the title came from. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." (p. 90) But not until Scout says to her father, "Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?" (p. 270), did I realize who the book's mockingbirds were. I will read this book with my children someday and hope they will with theirs.