Harper Lee's New Book

By now, everyone on the planet has heard that Harper Lee is about to publish her second novel (this July), 55 years after her classic To Kill a Mockingbird. This is great news for her devotees, who read it in middle school, bad news for any kid who had it crammed down his or her throat during middle school and hated it.

I only read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time a few years ago, well after the age of forty. How this happened, I don't know, but I am grateful that it did. In some ways, the book is wasted on people without enough life experience to truly appreciate it. Of course, it is also pretty accessible for kids and it serves as a great tool for teaching literary devices and character, but if one reads it in middle school, one should really go back to it, forget about the nuts and bolts of literary convention and enjoy it for its beauty.

I guess my only point in writing this is to encourage those who haven't read the classic to do so and to encourage those who only remember it from seventh or eighth grade to read it again, especially if they hated it then, in preparation for the new book.

...Mockingbird really is a wonderful work of art.

Atticus

I'm teaching my creative writing class to write fiction, now. This quarter, they start writing a novel. I know it is a novel that most of them will never finish, but the least I can do is to give them a push in the right direction.

As part of my plan, I am showing them two movies. They have read novels, but, for my purposes, the movies I have picked (Dances With Wolves and To Kill A Mockingbird) are effective in having them explore novel-style story structure.

Scout and Atticus

Today, we started talking about To Kill A Mockingbird, which they have all read at some point or another (way too early, as per the ridiculous and ubiquitous assumption that it is a book that kids are intellectually ready for simply because kids are the main characters), and I had an epiphany.

I stopped the lesson. I paused the film after Atticus hugs Scout good night. I told the girls that I wasn't talking to them for the moment. They laughed. I addressed the guys.