A 50th Anniversary Round-Up
Kitty and Young Bill Young, here. (Both, together!)
It’s a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that has been translated into almost 50 languages and read by 40 million souls on the planet. To Kill a Mockingbird is celebrating its Golden Anniversary this year. Its publication and reception was a watershed moment in American history (the issue of race would never be the same), and the media is giving the work and its reclusive author their fair due. Here’s a round-up of some info from around the web…
Bill Whitaker with CBS Sunday Morning filed this report that aired on Sunday, July 11.
Here’s a New York Times article on anniversary parties celebrating the book.
Britain’s Daily Mail has this fascinating piece on Harper Lee. (We had no idea that Lee and Truman Capote had known each other since childhood.)
Gilbert King writes for the Huffington Post on Thurgood Marshall and Atticus Finch.
Another Huffington Post link: Anna Quindlen on the Greatness of Scout.
And here’s a interesting post by Jesse Kornbluth, editor of Head Butler. (To Kill a Mockingbird is a woman’s book? Atticus Finch is a feminized male? Gosh! Who knew?)
Malcolm Gladwell stirs the pot in this New Yorker article, and S.T. Karnack on The American Century tells Gladwell where to go.
There are thousands of web articles out there, but we’ll wind up our round up with this Monroe Journal piece from Lee’s hometown of Monroeville.
The truly amazing thing about this anniversary is that we’re still discussing this book, 50 years after its publication. Aside from all of the popular and literary commentary on the work, the power of the book is the connection it creates with individual readers. So… now it’s your turn. What do you want to tell us about your experience with To Kill a Mockingbird?
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Comments
At work Bill has got us talking about our recollections of To Kill a Mockingbird. What disturbs Malcolm Gladwell about the book is why I think we’re still reading it and celebrating it fifty years later. It’s all about the changing of people’s “hearts and minds”. Atticus Finch wasn’t a civil rights leader, he was a man going about his business and doing the “right thing” when he needed to. This is the quiet change that moves us to keep reading Harper Lee’s words, to make the right choices and to applaud the people who show us the way.
Amen, Kitty! I’m all for the rebels, but we need the quiet heroes to lead the way as well.
Amen, Reggie! I’m going to do a post on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games very soon!
I can’t remember where I read it while surfing the web last weekend, but one article referred to the book as “juvenile” literature. I take issue with this. Obviously, the narrator is a young girl, so it appeals to young readers. But I don’t think of it as a young adult novel, and the success of the book proves it’s much more than that. We could say the same thing about Suzanne Collins’ wonderful Hunger Games novels: they’re marketed as a juvenile literature but people of all ages are reading them and loving them!