To Kill a Mockingbird

I think Atticus Finch represents the best qualities in a father and a man. If he is idealized, as many have said, it is an ideal all fathers can aspire to.

I first read this in high school, and I’m not sure I was mature enough to appreciate it. Later, it was a selection in the book discussion group I was in, where we focused less on the characters and more on the themes. When I read it a third time on my own, as an adult and father, I came to appreciate how Atticus Finch models the behavior he… show more.

This classic doesn’t stop playing in my head and is just as relevant today as it was back in the 1930s when it was written.

The plot is fascinating, profound, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Atticus Finch’s open-minded wisdom as a single parent is so refreshing. And who doesn’t love 8-year-old Scout, who is precocious, innocent, and righteous?

The reason why this is a classic? We will never tire of the story and lessons learned. 

There clearly was an oversight in my rearing, because I should have read it when I was 10. If I had, I would have reread it every 10 or so years, with wiser eyes, and seeing things I’d missed.

But at 10 I would have identified with Scout. I also would have been shocked and enlightened by her racial portrait of America, dazzled by her vision of life and friendships in a small town, and dreamed of being even a fraction of the storyteller Harper Lee was.

Instead, I somehow settled for the movie version – until now.

This book has fallen in and out of favor over the years, but I applaud and defend it as one of the most brilliant and moving books ever written.

There is something powerful about walking beside a young child and seeing the world through her eyes. Maycomb is not a perfect town. The neighbors and townsfolk are not perfect people. There is much to confuse in the court case taken on by Atticus Finch.

But as Scout tries to make sense of injustice in a broken world with broken people, she learns about character, choice, and courage. She will also… show more.

In this classic Southern tale, six-year-old narrator Scout Finch steals the show. 

This book tackles the good and bad in human nature, delivering astute commentary through gentle conversations between a smart, curious daughter and her wise father. Despite being written over sixty years ago, the relevance of this story persists. 

From mysterious Boo Radley to dependable Calpurnia to humble Atticus Finch, Scout’s story is full of characters that will touch your heart.  

This classic was one of the first ‘grown up’ works of fiction I read of my own accord, and the effect was profound.

The way the characters confronted prejudice, injustice, and racism as seen through a child’s eye was eye-opening for me. The setting was fascinating to me, as was the Depression era, and I developed an affinity for stories set in small-town farming communities during this time in history.

Scout’s realization that the world, or in this case her street, could be seen differently if one just stands on a neighbour’s porch. A new perspective on the same truth,… show more.

I loved To Kill a Mockingbird when I was growing up—both the book and the movie. (Who can resist Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch?) And I love them both still.

Scout may be one of the best narrators we have in American literature: wise and naïve, fierce and fragile, and as honest as she can possibly be at any given time. Mockingbird leads us into some of the darkest crevices of mid-1930s life in the deep South, and brings us out into the light of love, integrity, and what it truly means to be a good citizen of the world. 

Thanks to some, urm, interesting choices on the part of my high school American Literature teacher, I didn’t read this classic civil rights drama until college.

Lee turns the idea of the unreliable narrator on its head by creating an innocent narrator. There are many things that six-year-old Scout doesn't understand about her world, which allows her to observe it with unassuming clarity. But Scout isn’t just innocent. She’s funny. Her irresistible wit brings light to what could have been a very weighty and dark book.

Scout’s voice makes us want to keep reading a story that forces us to… show more.

This is another book I have taught to English classes and they’ve all fallen in love with its narrator, motherless Scout, cheering her on as she rages against being made into a more suitable ‘girl’ and urged to behave with more propriety.

At the beginning of the story, she is six. She lives in Maycomb, Alabama, in the early 1930s, and has yet to discover the injustice of the society within which she plays in the street, annoys her brother, and goes to school.

Harper Lee shows us very clearly, in the difference between Scout’s retrospective narrative and the child’s… show more.

Atticus and Scout Finch are OG father-daughter #goals, so it’s only fitting that any list of novels about father and daughters start here. Lawyer Atticus Finch teaches young Scout about empathy, the multiple perspectives to a story, and standing up for what’s right. His advice resonates with me decades after I first read this classic in middle school: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Atticus’ compassionate and measuredly wise parenting style, coupled with young Scout’s wide-eyed coming of age and discovery… show more.