| updated 7/5/2020. |
|
To Kill a MockingbirdHarper Lee
|
|
First Publication: May 1960 Category: Southern, gothic coming-of-age novel Sales: 40 million |
Accolades: 
|
|
About the Book: One of the best-loved stories of all time.” AZ Harper Lee’s “masterwork” AZ “was an immediate critical and financial success for its author.” LC It is “a gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice.” AZ “The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee’s observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was 10 years old. The story is told by the six-year-old Jean Louise Finch;” WK through her eyes, the reader “views a world of great beauty and savage inequities.” AZ Meanwhile, Atticus Finch, “her father – a crusading local lawyer – risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.” AZ He “one of the most enduring and heroic characters in all of American literature,” LC serving “as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers.” WK One critic called him “the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism.’” WK “To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America.” WK It has been translated into over forty languages and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 1962. “The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality.” WK “Scholars have noted that Lee also addresses issues of class, courage, compassion, and gender roles in the American Deep South. The book is widely taught in schools in the United States with lessons that emphasize tolerance and decry prejudice. Despite its themes, To Kill a Mockingbird has been subject to campaigns for removal from public classrooms, often challenged for its use of racial epithets.” WK Resources and Related Links:
|
