To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – Bee Readin'

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Do you remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird in High School or College?  I read it in High School and have seen the movie so remember the story but there is something about reading it now that gives me a different view point and a deeper understanding.  I hope it does that for you if you choose to read it again.

Book Club headed back to one of the great classics this month, as we also are reading Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee for November.  How do you review a classic like To Kill a Mockingbird; a book that plays an important roll in literacy?  Harper Lee won a Pulitzer Prize for the book and was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

To Kill a Mockingbird is set in small town Alabama in the 1930’s. Kids freely roamed the neighborhood and racism in the south is stifling.  Reading how life was back in the day, the racism was really hard for me to get through this time.  It was reality and with other books like The Help, it hurts to see what people were put through, how they were treated and mistreated.  Yet it still happens today.

The book is full of life lessons for Scout and Jem, one being when they sneak into court to watch their father Atticus defend Tom, who is an African American, they see the injustice.  Jem is changed and learns that a child’s carefree world is very different from the adult world.

They also learn that people aren’t always what they seem; Boo Radley, lives in the neighborhood, yet he  doesn’t come out of his house and the kids think the house is haunted. They dare each other to go on the property, or step up and touch the house, simply out of curiosity, fear and to see what will happen to them.  Don’t you remember as a kid, there was always one house in the neighborhood that had some one different living inside, you thought it was haunted and your imagination ran wild.  But in reality, they were people just like us, dealing with their own issues or demons.  Jem and Scout definitely learn this lesson towards the end of the book, when Boo steps in to save them from the evil that always lurks in the darkness, even in a small close knit community.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a book that will never go out of style, and to this day is relevant.  If you haven’t picked it up for a long time or ever, you may want to steal a few hours and read it.

Book Club was a fun night as always, dinner and wine were involved too; but the discussion was fascinating.  We had the typical discussion questions, but they had a stronger meaning with To Kill a Mockingbird.  If you are looking for questions for your own event, here is a link.

http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/1063-to-kill-a-mockingbird-lee?start=3

Another idea is to pull important quotes from the book, print them and pass one to each person.  We each read our quote and gave the significance of the quote to us, or our interpretation and meaning.  It added another element to the discussion.

I will see you all back in a few weeks with Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee.

In the meantime,

Bee Readin’
Terri

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3 thoughts on “To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee”

    1. Janet,
      I thoroughly enjoy it too. Reading it after having read it years ago certainly gave me a different take on the story. Thanks for sharing!

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