The last time I read the book I was about 11; a keen and precocious reader. But not keen or precocious enough — I remember very little about my first encounter with Scout and Atticus Finch. Some books should not be read too soon.
I reread To Kill A Mockingbird this weekend in honour of the 50th anniversary of its first publication in 1960, and I urge anyone who doesn’t know it, or hasn’t read it recently, to do the same.
It’s an extraordinary book (infinitely better than Kathryn Stockett’s cartoonish The Help, despite that book’s 50 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list) and it hasn’t aged at all in fifty years. 
For anyone interested in the amazing growth of YA literature (which most publishers will swear was invented in 1997), it’s probably worth considering that To Kill A Mockingbird would certainly be published as a young adult novel today — for better or worse. It’s hard to imagine it winning the Pulitzer Prize as a YA novel, and equally hard to imagine Harper Lee introducing herself at literary festivals, somewhat apologetically, as a children’s writer.
Lee, by the way, is very much alive — and not writing. Her first (and only) novel sold over thirty million copies and is still going strong half a century later. She was once wisely quoted as saying that there was no place to go but down.
P.S. Harper Lee and Truman Capote grew up in the same small town, were childhood friends, and covered a great deal of similar territory in their books. I read In Cold Blood only a year or two after TKAM — so I guess it’s time to revisit that one, too.
I suspect that many of the writers I enjoyed as a teen would now be sold as YA. Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, even Stephen King and Primo Levi I suspect could find some of their work classed as such now.
I think you’re right, Celine. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — but perhaps it’s the slight sense of ghetto-ization of YA that makes it a bit uncomfortable?
Hard to imagine her introducing herself at literary festivals at all. (I think someone in The Times was trying to make the same point doing – but what s/he ended up doing was comparing her to Susan Boyle.)
Harper Lee/Susan Boyle? A bit lateral for the likes of me….
I read To Kill A Mockingbird in year 10, which was a million years ago, so I should probably re-read it too. (It’s definitely here somewhere, on one of the shelves …) At the moment I am enjoying David Mitchell’s new book (about time!), Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds and The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. I haven’t read In Cold Blood, but you’ve piqued my interest; I have read Other Voices, Other Rooms, and recommend it. And while I’m recommending … Have you read The Red Shoe by Ursula Dubosarsky? If not, I think that you would enjoy it.
to kill a mockingbird book, whare cheap to kill a mockingbird book.One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, served as the basis of an enormously popular motion picture