Face, Meet Palm

Yes, I need a good face palm. I wrote a long, long entry about my favourite books, and I left out one of my all-time favourites. How could I have forgotten To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. Somehow, I did. It wasn't even on my list of books to go through. I was horrified when I realized that it wasn't there, and I decided it wasn't enough to simply add on to my last entry, so I'm creating an entire entry about To Kill a Mockingbird.

The irony is that when I first read Mockingbird, I really didn't like it at all. I can still remember it - I was in Grade 5 at Hawthorne Public School in Ladner, BC, and I was buying books from Scholastic. Does that still happen? We would get a brochure every month with the latest books from scholastic, I would select the ones I wanted, and my mother would write a cheque which I would bring into the school. My teacher would then send in the order, and a couple of weeks later, my books would arrive. One month, Mockingbird was among the books I order. I would have been 10 or 11 at the time, and although my reading level was exceptionally high, I don't know that my maturity level was developed enough to understand the book. When I read it then, I really hated it. I didn't pick it up again for another 14 years or so.

When I moved to Colombia to begin teaching English there, To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the books I was expected to teach. I re-read it, and fell instantly in love (14 years later). I loved the story, the characters, the lessons ... really, I loved everything about it. I really loved Atticus Finch. When he was named the number one hero from the AFI, I really understood it. I taught Mockingbird for three years in Colombia, and another couple of years when I returned to Canada. I haven't taught it as a class novel for a number of years now (mostly because I've been teaching history), but I would love to teach it again.

Although it was written in the 1960s, and set in the 1930s, I truly believe that it is not dated. The lessons it teaches are still as valid today as they were forty or seventy years ago. Racism still exists, an unjust justice system still exists, people fighting against prejudice still exist. In some ways, teaching this book may be more important than it was twenty or thirty years ago. Unfortunately, a number of people seem to believe that the issues brought out in Mockingbird are not issues any more. I wish I could agree.

My love for To Kill a Mockingbird reached a new level when I read the book Mockingbird by Charles J. Shields. I had never known how much of her own life Harper Lee had put into her novel. The fact that the character Dill was based on Truman Capote just blew me away. Sometimes, learning more about an author or their inspiration for their work can lessen my enjoyment of the novel itself, but that didn't happen for me in this case. This is also one of the rare instances where watching the movie didn't take away from my enjoyment of the novel. The movie version is amazing. The scene where Atticus has just lost the court case brings a lump to my throat every time.

I love, love, love, this book.