My son paused by my desk and asked me why I looked sad. I told him that Harper Lee, the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” had died that morning. “That’s too bad,” he said. “You know, that was the only book they made us read in middle school that I actually liked.”
I thought back to my own first encounter with the classic, first published in 1960. I was in my fifth-grade classroom on a humid, gray afternoon—fidgeting as usual—waiting for Mrs. Chetwood to begin our new read-aloud session. We had recently finished “The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek” by Evelyn Sibley Lampman and I was looking forward to another fantasy adventure. She announced that the next book would be “something quite different.” Different, indeed.
Beginning with a few simple words, we were transported to a small, hot, dusty Depression-era Alabama town called Maycomb. This was the world of Scout Finch and her attorney father, Atticus, her brother, Jem and their friends and neighbors. It was a world of secrets and lies, of sunny warmth and chilling darkness, of love, friendship and irrational hatred.
Harper Lee had knitted together a seamless, heartbreaking story from disparate, colorful and soiled strands of her own personality and family history—and that story became very real to me.
Just that summer, I had been to the South and seen chain gangs, the “whites only” water fountains and restaurants—and been filled with an inchoate sense of shame. Lee’s words helped me put that shame into context and gave me the language with which to examine my feelings and shape my beliefs.
Kids take what they need from books—and good books have a lot to give. Yes, I needed Atticus Finch’s wisdom and quiet, courageous decency to give me a framework for thinking about the larger world.
But even more, I needed Scout. She was a revelation to me. Here was a real girl, a stubborn tomboy who sassed back and got into fights. She was young—but she was smart, tough, brave and curious. She wrestled with big issues, like good and evil, fairness and hypocrisy. And she was a hero.
In my experience, heroes had just seemed to pop out of thin air as perfect, all-knowing and fully formed adults—like Athena emerging from Zeus’s forehead. I had never been able figure out how to go from being an awkward, insecure kid to being a grown-up person worthy of respect and admiration. Scout showed me the way: Stand up for yourself. Do what’s right. Be kind.
Miss Jean Louise Finch (Scout’s full name) has been my hero and my friend for a long time, and over the years, she encouraged me to befriend others—Meg Murry, Jane Eyre, Lizzie Bennett, Celie Harris and Dorothea Brooke—to name a few.
That is how good books do their work. They reach out to you across space and time to fill your empty places, light your way and inspire you to go farther.
So thank you, Harper Lee. Rest in peace. Scout will still be here to carry your torch.
