TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee

GRADE: A

It's sad that I haven't read this book until now. Unlike other people it was never assigned to me in school and I never got around to reading it, along with many other classics (I'm trying to rectify that this year). I had also never gotten around to watching the movie, so I was fairly unfamiliar with the story before I started.

When I first started this book, I was disappointed. I initially thought that the novel was about the trial of a black man wrongfully accused of the rape of a white woman, told through the eyes of the defense attorney's young daughter. So when much of the beginning of the book featured the little girl running around town getting into mischief with her big brother, I admit I was a little thrown. But then, I started realizing that I was totally mistaken: the book was about the coming-of-age of and loss of innocence of little Scout during a few very impressionable years living amongst her tiny community in Alabama during the Great Depression, with the rape trial being one of the big events that teaches her about the bigger world she's living in. After I realized that, I was fully lost in the book. So simple in it's delivery, it sort of sneaks up on you with it's astute lessons about prejudice, decency, community, heroism, and just plain growing up. Once I finished reading in the early morning, I discovered that the book truly lives up to it's reputation as one of the greatest novels ever written.