Wednesday, July 7, 2010

50 Years On, 'Mockingbird' Still Sings America's Song


From NPR- One of my favorites turns fifty-

Fifty years ago, Harper Lee had the kind of success that most writers would die for: Shortly after her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published on July 11, 1960, it hit the best-seller lists. In 1961, it won a Pulitzer Prize, and in 1962, it was made into an Academy Award-winning film. It has never gone out of print. Lee stepped out of the limelight and stopped doing interviews years ago — and she never wrote another book.

Still, her influence has far outlasted most writers of her generation.
For the high-schoolers reading To Kill a Mockingbird today, America is a very different place than it was when Lee wrote her novel 50 years ago. Lee's story of Scout Finch and her father, Atticus — a small-town Southern lawyer who defends a black man unjustly accused of rape — came out just as the nation was fighting over school desegregation. Today, in a 10th grade English class at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., students of many different races and ethnicities are studying the book together. Their teacher, Laurel Taylor, says that the story still resonates — and with students of all backgrounds.

More here-

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128340180

No comments: