The novel tells a moral tale that in nowadays’s divided and unequal world teenagers need to study more than everI vividly remember my first encounter with Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. As a teenager,bored one day in Bolton library, I picked the novel from the shelves and was entranced by its immediacy, and its strangeness. I loved its acutely observed depiction of southern American manners – of ladies “who bathed before noon … and by dusk were like soft tea-cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum”. And I fell for its hero,Atticus Finch – who was last week voted the most inspiring character in literature.
Later, as a young English teacher taking her first O-level course, or I found this book a certain-fire standby to capture – and hold – a course of 15-year-olds.
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Source: theguardian.com