Award-winner-Pulitzer Prize
As a teenager I read this book and loved it.(I did not read many classic books in my younger years, so I have no idea what compelled me to read it!) Reading it aloud to my boys was a pure delight. Often they would ask me to "keep reading", which is the highest compliment.
Scout and her brother Jem are comfortable on their street in their southern town, Maycomb-the gossipy ladies, their walk to school, the mysterious Radley house on the corner where Boo Radley only to emerge at night (supposedly), Atticus, their lawyer father who comes home like clockwork for meals, and Calpurnia, their Black housekeeper. Then their father agrees to defend a Black man accused of raping a white young lady. The town has its Opinions. Those Opinions affect the kids. Danger lurks in places they never imagined. Through it all, the children learn what their father means by, "You never understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . .until you climb into his skin and walk around in it". This book made me cry while reading aloud-a rare occurrence.
I think this novel makes it into my top ten favorite novels. The writing is superb, the story is compelling, and the characters and the setting are well-developed.
A Bildungsroman novel
**Highly, highly recommend (but see warnings below).
Warning: swearing-even Scout, an eight-year-old utters some swear words, the topic of rape-nothing graphic but enough not to hand this novel to a junior higher or younger to read on own, prejudice behavior and actions, violence, the children are violently attacked and a murder occurs
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