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Mockingbird, Mockingbird! Wherefore art thou so popular? And wherefore art thou so maligned? So popular, in fact, that the mayor of Chicago would exhort his denizens to read and discuss you en masse? So popular that more than 30 million copies of you have been sold since your publication in 1960 (Carrier 216)? And so maligned that writer Francine Prose calls you a "sentimental, middlebrow favorite" (76), refers to your presence in public school curricula as "grisly" (77), and urges that high school students be shielded from your likes and exposed to a strict diet of top-flight writers like Kafka, Shakespeare, and Twain.
I maintain, however, that you are not as simplistic as some people would have us believe. You are rich enough in thematic material and accessible enough and moving enough to open the eyes of many an American high school student to worlds and perspectives they need to see. The good you can do in a high school classroom and the possibilities you present for multigenre teaching certainly outweigh any damage.
Why Continue to Teach Mockingbird?
I had been away from To Kill a Mockingbird for twenty years, and when I found myself about to teach it again, I wondered how my view of it might have changed. I also wondered how well it has held up over the years. So, while I looked forward to revisiting it, I also had some doubts. What I did find was perhaps a dated novel, but a moving one nonetheless. I found in particular that the themes do remain relevant. It is precisely because these themes in Harper Lee's only novel are appropriate for twenty-first century American teenagers that I decided to devote a large chunk of time in my ninth grade classes to the study of the novel. I developed lessons in vocabulary, personal writing, expository writing, history, and poetry to accompany our reading.
The most interesting and rewarding approach I took to teaching the novel, however, was to experiment with integrating it with the study of poetry. Studying selected poems along with Mockingbird can tremendously enhance the themes as well as deepen students' worldviews and awareness of the lives of others. And while the novel concerns tragedy and injustice, heartache and loss, it also...