To Kill a Mocking Bird

'Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a Mockingbird.' Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. In 1930’s Alabama, Scout Finch watches her father stand up for justice, in a town steeped in prejudice. Atticus Finch tells his children that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. That lesson becomes the moral centre of Harper Lee’s classic novel as Atticus defends a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores race, class, childhood and conscience in the Deep South of the 1930s. Around them is a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy, and at the centre stands Atticus, whose quiet struggle for justice makes him one of literature’s enduring figures of moral courage. To Kill A Mockingbird is a modern American classic, a Southern coming-of-age novel and a powerful story about racial injustice, family and integrity. This edition of one of the world’s best-loved books features the original text. **One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World **

'Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a Mockingbird.' This book presents a lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with both compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, Atticus, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy.