To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel written by Harper Lee in 1961. The book comes from the perspective of a child living in small-town Alabama in the 1930s, and is a renowned coming-of-age story. In the book, the white protagonist and her older brother face horrible treatment from their neighbors, classmates, and even relatives due to their father defending a black man in a rape case. The children in this story have to learn how to face the people around them while still growing up. To Kill a Mockingbird is an excellent and award-winning novel that teaches students valuable moral lessons about a time when racism was much more rampant and even fatal in America, and should be taught in schools. To begin, To Kill a Mockingbird …show more content…
It teaches people to embrace the differences in their fellow humans instead of hating their contrasting traits. Another time that Atticus conveys this message comes at the end of the book, when Scout tiredly summarizes the way a character was treated in a book he had just read to her, she says, “...Atticus, he was real nice...”, to which Atticus replies, “Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.” (Page 376, paragraph 6). This ending to the book perfectly encapsulates what Atticus had ultimately been trying to teach the kids the entire time. It’s something that the jury who was convicting Tom Robinson should have known, something that the entire town should have known about Boo Radley, a neighbor who rarely leaves his home, whose reputation was tarnished by rumors and gossip, and something that the kids should have known when they were busy making up even more stories about Boo Radley’s life based off their own preconceived notions about him. Boo Radley, a white man, and Tom Robinson, a black man, are two of the main characters in To Kill a Mockingbird, about the lesson of embracing