Book review by José Miguel Galarza
(English Dept.)

When it comes to recollect those past events which inescapably molded her mind, Scout, otherwise Jean Louise, cannot help but start with something Atticus Finch taught them, his children.
“It’s a SIN to kill a mockingbird, Mockingbirds harm no one;and they create beautiful music.”
Whether it was this ancestor of them who paddled up the Alabama river or the summer visits of their neighbor-friend Dill that started all this, these two motherless children are faced with a Southern prejudiced society which includes all them characters.

The lives of the people living on the streets of Maycomb pop as the main story develops. This trial of Tom Robinson, a Negro, is the lead which drags them all. The Radley who buys cotton -a polite term for doing nothing-; or the Cunninghams who could not pay but with a sack of hickory nuts, being this the time of the crash; or Miss Maudie’s azaleas in the harshest winter ever since 1885; or Aunt Alexandra; and sheriff Tate and “Old Tim Johnson”; the humming sound of Reverend Syke’s Negro congregation; or the Ewells and all the hatred deep-seated created by discrimination and persecution.
The thread of the story is easy to follow. It is the life of two kids and a father who imbues them with the principles and ideals of freedom and equality.

THE MOVIE

A couple of years after the coming out of the novel in 1960, it was made into a movie. Robert Mulligan directed Gregory Peck and others obtaining three Academy Awards. You won’t regret having seen it before reading the novel itself or viceversa. Outstanding acting and set with a gripping script.