To Kill a Mockingbird
By Harper Lee
Warner Books
Reviewed by Rodman Phillbrick
I’ve never been to Alabama, but novelist Harper Lee made me feel as if I had been there in the long, hot summer of 1935, when a lawyer named Atticus Finch decided to defend an innocent black man accused of a horrible crime. The story of how the whole town reacted to the trial is told by the lawyer’s daughter, Scout, who remembers exactly what it was like to be eight years old in 1935, in Maycomb, Alabama.
Scout is the reason i loved this book, because her voice rings so clear and true. Not only does she make me see the things she sees, she makes me feel the things she feels. There’s a lot more going on than just the trial, and Scout tells you all about it.
A man called Boo Radley lives next door. Very few people have ever seen Boo, and Scout and her friends have a lot fun telling scary stories about him. The mystery about Boo Radley is just one of the reasons you want to keep turning the pages to find out what happens in To Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird is filled with interesting characters like Dill, and Scout makes them all seem just as real as the people in your own hometown. Here’s how Scout describes Miss Caroline, who wore a red striped dress:”She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop.”
The large theme of the story is about racial intolerance, but Scout never tries to make it a”lesson,” it’s simply part of the world she describes. That’s why To Kill a Mockingbird rings true, and why it all seems so real.
Even though the story took place many years ago, you get the idea that parts of it could happen today, in any town where people distrust and fear each other’s different.
In a just world an innocent man should be found not guilty. But if you want to know what this particular jury finally decides and what happens to Scout and Jem and Dill and Boo Radley and the rest of the people who live and breathe in To Kill a Mockingbird, you’ll have to read the book.
“ .... Scout and her friends have a lot fun telling scary stories about him.” (paragraph 4) The underlined word has similar meaning with .…