I Am Scout

My favorite book of all time is To Kill A Mockingbird. I think I read for the first time when I was about 10 or 11. When I read it for the first time, I remember thinking it was funny, and that I liked Scout's spunk. And for whatever reason...reasons lost long ago in time and space (name that movie), I kept coming back to TKaM. Over the years after that, I averaged reading it about once a year -- usually in the summers, when I had a little free time. In fact, I remember my mother's old copy of the novel traveling with us nearly every summer that my family drove to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (at least 9 years).

As I mentioned above, I have my Mom to thank for giving me my first copy of TKaM. She went to my high school back when they sold students the books instead of renting them out for the year. So my Mom kept her copy from freshman English. I found it in a box in our basement one summer, along with copies of Swiss Family Robinson and The Illustrated Man. Even though I've read all those books and read them each multiple times, Mockingbird was always my favorite.

For the past 6 years, I've been an English teacher and had the pleasure of teaching this novel in my classroom. I hope that at least a few of my students see the same potential I saw in Mockingbird: humor, good morals, family values, and most of all, a darn good story. I hope at least one will find a copy of this book someday and re-read it and think: "This story is as good as Mrs. Miller always tried to tell me it was." That's the hope, anyway.

And so, due to my love of Mockingbird, I've always been interested in other aspects of the novel: it's autobiographical nature (the story is based on Harper Lee's early years in Monroeville, Alabama and many characters are loosely based on people from the neighborhood where she grew up), Harper Lee's unlikely friendship with the...difficult Truman Capote (she wrote large chunks of In Cold Blood, but received very little credit for her contributions -- she was even listed second in the dedication, behind Truman's lover), and finally, why Mockingbird was something of a one-hit-wonder -- Harper Lee never published another novel.

All of these issues, and many more besides, are addressed in Charles Shield's biography, I Am Scout. And unlike other biographies (and most nonfiction, truth be told), I was fascinated. The book is engagingly written and reads like a good book -- not your typical biography. It's informative and fun and has lots of pictures.

Oh, yes, and it's because of all these things that I Am Scout is so appealing to students. I use this book in both my junior American Lit. class (which reads Mockingbird) and in my senior Contemporary Lit. class (which reads In Cold Blood).

Overall, this is a great book and I recommend it to those who are bored with more common non-fiction offerings.