From The Writer’s Almanac:
Fifty years ago today, Harper Lee’s (books by this author) only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published, the story narrated by six-year-old Scout Finch in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama. It was an immediate best-seller, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and an instant American classic. It continues to sell incredibly well, with 30 million copies still in print.
The book’s title appears in a scene in chapter 10, where Scout remembers something her dad, Atticus, has said and asks her neighbor Miss Maudie about it.
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
“Your father’s right,” she said. “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.”
Although I’ve already planned my summer reading (Last Night In Twister River and On The Road) I started re-reading To Kill A Mockingbord last night, for the first time since 1993. My brother and I had been discussing only yesterday recent pieces on NPR about Harper Lee, noting the 50th anniversary of the book’s publication, and we agreed that were both planning to re-read the story. The story is incredibly complex, on so many levels, yet so basic and simple. Although Will is a voracious reader, he’s probably still a year or two away from attempting to read and comprehend the story; however, I have at least introduced the book title to him, and he *does* know and like the Elmer Bernstein score (To Kill a Mocking Bird Suite) which we’ve listened to in the car many times…
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