Journey to the Roots of Human Behavior with To Kill a Mockingbird

Did you know To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960? It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

Review:
To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is an excellent novel. Harpee Lee has proven to America that great literasture exists.

The story take place in a small town call Maycomb, Alabama in 1960. The story is about a white lawyer defending a black males who have been acussed of beating up a white woman. The lawyer has two children, one boy (Jem Finch), and one girl (Scott Finch). Jem really want to play football with his dad Atticus(the lawyer), by Atticus said he is too old to play football. Jem thought to himself about his dad that he can never play football with him, nor do anything.

The two children have their own secret. They wonder who lives in the old house across the street in the corner. They were scared everytime they walked by there.

The setting takes place during the great depression when people had no jobs but to gossip about other people. An example of this is the neighborhood recluse Boo Radley. Many people started saying bad things about him and his past that most of the town was believing a lie, that he was a criminal.

Harper Lee decides to show the reader how bad people and lies are, and she refers to Boo as a mockingbird, which is an animal that does not bother anyone and is reclusive. The people go on asking themselves why Boo is reclusive when they are the reasons.

The book is unique because it encompasses so many emotions: humor, misery, tragedy, indifference to others' suffering, loneliness, nobility, understanding, bravery, and acceptance. This book is great not only because of the moral value it brings but for the description of the point of vue of a 6 year old child that's going threw things that kids usually experience at age 13 or 14 but what I think fascinated me the most was the people thought in the southern county of Maycomb.

Scout herself is as feisty a heroine as any recent tomboys; she refuses to repress herself, even when she is told to be "a lady". There are so many noble and spiteful characters that the reader will not be bored; this book is truly an inspiration for all. This book will keep your attention and then it will get serious and then it is a ferious ending.

Strongly reccomend this book for young adults. The end succinctly wraps up the story, and the way the author puts the climax in the beginning is wonderfully clever. In conclusion, this book shows so much of our life, and we reccomend adolescents read this book because of the insights of life it presents to the reader. Reader beware, To Kill A Mockingbird will play upon your heart and soul and it will leave you thinking about values you and others hold in your lives. In short, we loved it, and it is possibly one of the best books we will ever read.