1. To Kill A Mockingbird
Harper Lee

2. Awards Pulitzer Prize for fictional literature in 1961
Alabama Library Association Award
Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews
Bestsellers' paperback of the year award 1962
*The novel is a classic that has been translated into 10 languages!

3. Harper Lee
Nelle Harper Lee was born April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, a small Alabama town.
Lee's father was a lawyer in Monroeville, much like Atticus Finch in Maycomb County. Lee went to the University of Alabama to study law. While there, Lee contributed to several campus publications. She left the university six months before completing her degree and struck out for New York and a literary career.
During the 1950s Lee worked as a reservations clerk before she gave up the job to focus intensely on her writing. A literary agent who'd read her manuscript of three essays and two short stories encouraged her to expand one of the stories into a novel. This work became her first and last novel, To Kill A Mockingbird (1960).

5. Inspiration? The Scottsboro case
In 1931 when Harper Lee was 5, nine young black men were accused of raping two white women on a train.
After a series of bitter trials, four of the men were sentenced to long prison sentences - even though prominent lawyers argued that the accusations were false.
It was later discovered that the women were lying.

6. Setting 1930s-Maycomb, Alabama (Southern USA)
Post slavery, but in the south, segregation is legal
Pre- Civil Rights Movements (Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks)

7. Civil War War within the US – North Vs. South (different mentalities)
North – Progressive, Modern
South – Traditional (They lost the war, but didn’t change their ways). Slavery was illegal, but black people still answered to the white man.

8. Southern Mentality
Family values
Hospitality
Gossip

9. Main characters
The Finches- Atticus breaks free from traditional frame of mind. He hires a black woman to care for the children – she is treated like family. He is also a lawyer who defends a black man on trial.
Narrated by Scout Finch, now an adult reflecting on her life the summer that she was six. She tells the story of how her brother broke his arm, but she goes WAY back to her family lineage. Where you come from, and how long you have been in there is what brought people status in the county.

10. Plantations
Beautiful land owned by white people, but cared for by black people.

11. 1930s Vernacular Negro and Nigger
Not a nice word, but it was a reality at the time. It is used frequently in the novel because the term was quite commonly used at the time. This is still not a positive label.

12. Reading Notes
While you are reading, take notes on the following five topics:
Injustice
Jem and Scout growing up
Words of Wisdom
Conflict
Family relations