Shoot all the blue jay’s if you can hit ‘em, but remember it is a sin to kill a Mockingbird.Don’t shoot me for writing so late on this one. No excuse is a good excuse.

I can safely categorize this book as one of my best reads. 8-year-old Scout is our candid innocent narrator, and the book reflects the musings of Scout and Jem, her brother, as they grow up in the prejudiced town of Maycomb, Alabama. The book has two parts, in the first Scout tells us the predilections, and in the second we learn what consequences these feelings can give rise to.

We meet the seclusive Radleys, the poor, egoistic Cunninghams, and Scout’s teacher Miss Caroline who wants Scout to learn from her and not her father. Scout learns what is compromise – it is not after all bending the law but an understanding by mutual concession. And we always have the housemaid Calpurina who is a negro and one whose existence is must for Scout and Jem. Atticus Finch – he is Jem’s and Scout’s father and everyone’s mentor. He is worth quoting:

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ‘em all away from you. That’s never possible.

I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he’d rather I’d shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted – if I could hit ‘em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird. Well, I reckon because mockingbirds don’t do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat people’s gardens, don’t nest in the corncrib, they don’t do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.

The real courage is not with the man with a gun in his hand but it’s when you know you’re licked before you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.

The second half is about Tom Robbinson – a nigger, which is a predilection, charged with a rape of a white women. Ewell’s are the victims. Atticus Finch, the defender. The end, however, is rather scary as both loose it. But it has surprises too and we realise, as Atticus Finch puts it, most people are good once you know them.

It has genuine humor and, I think it is a straight-forward, growing-up book that will teach you how to be accepting.