"To Kill A Mockingbird" -- A Meaningful Book to Carolyn M.

Having been asked to share one book that I really like or that really means a lot to me is like asking me to share my favorite scripture: it changes from day to day! But it has been nice to think back on so many of the books that I have loved reading through the years. (I really only started reading when I started having children and had all of this time while nursing babies! And right after moving here – 26 years ago- we formed a book group that I have loved attending as I’ve read books that I’m sure I would never had read otherwise! And I’ve loved discussions with sisters that have become dear friends because of the time we’ve spent together reading and discussing books. I love book groups!) 

I was not an avid reader in my youth but was required to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” sometime in my early teens. Although I grew up in the 60’s I lived in a small town in Utah and knew very little about segregation or the civil rights movement. The only black people I’d ever seen were at the airport in Salt Lake. I was very sheltered! So reading about Atticus Finch, raising two children alone in Alabama during the depression was quite an eye opener for me. Atticus is a model of any character I love to read about: someone with great moral decency, who is determined to admire the good in everybody; is not judgmental but very forgiving; who doesn’t lose faith in humanity in their capacity to do good even when they are surrounded by the evils of the world; teaches his children compassion and understanding and sympathy as found in the following quote: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from their point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it”. And isn’t that what we are all trying to do here on earth? : To learn to love and appreciate people – all people – by looking for and recognizing their goodness! 

I love any book that leaves me feeling uplifted for having read it. I love a book that makes me want to be better; to try harder! I read “To Kill a Mockingbird” again last summer, as it was the 50th anniversary of its printing and was happy to see that I still loved it for those very same reasons! Even though my perspective has changed now that I’m “grown” and actually live in the South, I still found those values Atticus Finch was teaching his children are just as important today as when I first read them.