Posted on | July 11, 2012 | No Comments “…Shoot all the bluejays
you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a
mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it
was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
“Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one
thing … but sing their hearts out for us.” Nelle Harper E. Lee
was born in Alabama in 1926 and wrote only one book in her
lifetime, published on this day in 1960; the brilliant To Kill A
Mockingbird. It won the Pulitzer-Prize and is one of the 20th
century’s greatest literary works. Now 52 years old, the book
has been translated into 40 languages, sold 35 million copies,
and was made into a film starring Gregory Peck for which he
rightly won an Oscar in 1962. The story of To Kill A Mockingbird
confronts huge subjects head-on: racism, class, courage,
forgiveness, loss, justice, crime, punishment, death, violence,
being a woman, class. Despite being as complex as Dickens and as
tragically beautiful as