This is an ideal "coming of age" story with wonderful lessons to be learned. Written in the autobiographical manner, it's very engaging. I've always loved the film version with Gregory Peck, but the book is so much more. Highly recommend it!
Some excerpts: (This one is after a visit of Atticus and the kids with his brother Jack. Uncle Jack had overheard young Scout saying d**m and h**l.)
"When supper was over, Uncle Jack went to the livingroom and sat down. He slapped his thighs for me to come sit on his lap. I liked to smell him: he was like a bottle of alcohol and something pleasantly sweet. He pushed back my bangs and looked at me. 'You're more like Atticus than your mother,' he said. 'You also growing out of your pants a little.' 'I reckon they fit all right.' 'You like words like d**m and h**l now, don't you?' I said I reckoned so. 'Well I don't,' said Uncle Jack, 'not unless there's extreme provocation connected with 'em. I'll be here a week, and I don't want to hear any words like that while I'm here. Scout, you'll get in trouble if you go around saying things like that. You want to grow up to be a lady, don't you?' I said not particularly. 'Of course you do,' he replied." (chapter 9)
(A child's description of their father, such a classic example of pre-experience that drastically changed her ideas of the kind of man her father truly was.)
"Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty. When Jem and I asked him why he was so old, he said he got started late, which we felt reflected upon his abilities and manliness. He was much older than the parents of our school contemporaries, and there was nothing Jem or I could say about him when our classmates said, 'My father--'...Jem was football crazy. Atticus was never too tired to play keep-away, but when Jem wanted to tackle him Atticus would say, 'I'm too old for that, son.' Our father didn't do anything. He worked in an office, not in a drugstore. Atticus did not drive a dump-truck for the county, he was not the sheriff, he did not farm, work in a garage, or do anything that could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone. Besides that, he wore glasses." (chapter 10)
(This one a reflection of Scout's regarding Dill, the young boy who came to their town every summer to visit his Aunt Rachel, one of the neighbors.)
"The fact that I had a permanent fiance was little compensation for his absence: I had never thought about it, but summer was Dill by the fishpool smoking string, Dill's eyes alive with complicated plans to make Boo Radley emerge; summer was the swiftness with which Dill would reach up and kiss me when Jem was not looking, the longings we sometimes felt each other feel. With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable. I stayed miserable for two days." (chapter 12)
(On her brother Jem's growing up.)
"Jem was twelve. He was difficult to live with, inconsistent, moody. His appetite was appalling, and he told me so many times to stop pestering him I consulted Atticus: 'Reckon he's got a tapeworm?' Atticus said no, Jem was growing. I must be patient with him and disturb him as little as possible." (chapter 12)
Originally published in 1961 by Harper & Row.
