Summer Reading
This summer’s novel, which won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize, is Harper Lee's American classic, To Kill A Mockingbird. All students should read this book over the summer. For some students, this may be a book that will be re-read. Please arrive on the first day of school having read this book closely, thought about the questions below, and ready to participate in discussions and activities surrounding the novel.
To Kill A Mockingbird is a classic of American literature that turns a hard eye on ignorance and injustice, especially racial injustice in the Jim Crow South. Through the memorable characters and intensely emotional plot of this great book, our University High School community will have the chance to talk about how fiction actually affects the way we think about important issues many decades after that fiction has been written, and why we sometimes say of fiction it is “stronger than fact.” While there is no formal assignment tied to summer reading, students are expected to read and reflect on the text. Things to think about as you read…
How is it that someone might believe in the idea of legal justice but still look down on a lawyer who represents an alleged criminal?
How would you describe Scout’s voice—her tone?
What does this book say about making assumptions and spreading rumors about someone you don’t know?
Do you agree with Atticus Finch’s assessment of human character at the end of the novel?
What is the role that Maycomb County itself plays in the novel, especially in the way some of the characters see themselves?
Wise Blood (1952), by Flannery O’Connor, is another “southern gothic” that examines psychological and religious obsessions as well as the injustices done by those who take advantage of others.
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines depicts the dilemma faced by a highly educated African-American teacher in a small southern town when he comes to know a man falsely accused of murder.
The Yearling (1938), by Marjorie Kinnon Rawlings, is a coming-of-age plot that focuses on a hard choice that a young boy has to make between two kinds of love.
Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton tells the story of an unjust trial in Apartheid South Africa.
A Time to Kill, by John Grisham, is legal thriller about the trial of two white supremacists for the rape of a young black girl and the modern injustices that remind us of racism’s longevity in America.
