Review by Shayla Walker

When I was in the 8th grade my class had to read To KIll A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Back then I didn’t like it because at the time I wasn’t old enough to really understand the book and connect to it. My class had to read it again this year, two years later, and I realize that this book still relates to today’s society, even though it was written a long time ago.                                  

The narrator of the book is a little girl named Scout. This is a really creative way to write a book because the way that Scout tells the story sounds mature and then there are times that we can tell that she doesn’t fully grasp what’s actually going on because she’s just a kid. Scout has an older brother named Jem and a friend about her age named Dill. Over the summer Dill visits the town of Maycomb and they all spend the summer together. They create a bad habit of teasing a person named Boo Radley who lives across the street from Jem and Scout, without really knowing Boo or even meeting him before. This is just what people in Maycomb do.

Jem and Scout’s father is a lawyer named Atticus. He is defending a black man named Tom Robinson. At the time this was basically mission impossible. In the early 1900s a white man’s word always won against a black man’s word. Atticus knows that he probably can’t help Tom but tries anyway because he wants to be a good role model for his children.                     

My favorite part about the book is that the themes of the book relate to our world today. There are several themes conveyed in this book: don’t judge a book by it’s cover, to think about what it’s like in other people’s shoes, to turn the other cheek even when someone doesn’t deserve it, and that regardless of race everyone is still a human being.