Overview
Read Kerry Madden's posts on the Penguin Blog.
Nelle Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and became an instant bestseller. Two years later it was an Academy Award– winning film. Today, it remains standard—and beloved—reading in English classes. But Lee never wanted “the book” to define who she was, which explains her aversion to any kind of publicity. Kerry Madden conducted extensive research for this Up Close biography, which reveals Lee to be a down-to-earth Southern woman who enjoys baseball games and playing golf—and whose one and only published book happened to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Synopsis
Nelle Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and became an instant bestseller. Two years later it was an Academy Award— winning film. Today, it remains standard—and beloved—reading in English classes. But Lee never wanted “the book” to define who she was, which explains her aversion to any kind of publicity. Kerry Madden conducted extensive research for this Up Close biography, which reveals Lee to be a down-to-earth Southern woman who enjoys baseball games and playing golf—and whose one and only published book happened to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Booklist
Madden has done a fine job of researching the novelist's life and presenting it with respect for her point of view.
Editorials
Booklist
Madden has done a fine job of researching the novelist's life and presenting it with respect for her point of view.Children's Literature -
Harper Lee doesn't give interviews. Therefore, Madden has relied on previous unauthorized biographies, interviews of others, magazine articles, and reviews to produce (despite some careless grammar and construction) a colorful account of Lee's life and work. Born in 1926, Nelle Harper Lee grew up wild in a small Alabama town during the Great Depression. Readers will gain an impression of the sometimes eccentric life in a Southern family that achieved a great deal. Lee's father and sister Alice were both lawyers, while Nelle herself became a successful and much honored writer. (Later, she worked with childhood playmate Truman Capote on his book In Cold Blood.) After beginning to write when she was seven, Lee first studied law, but followed her true vocation by moving to New York determined to produce a novel. The result of her talent, persistence, a generous subsidy, and a sympathetic editor was To Kill a Mockingbird. The book was published in 1960 to instant success and fame. Going on to gain numerous awards and a movie contract in which Gregory Peck played lawyer Atticus Finch (based on her father), Lee never published another novel. Madden presents her, with much documentation, as a very private person who, finally having enough of celebrity, lived her own simple life, though never becoming a recluse. Students who love the now classic novel will find much of interest in this "Up Close" biography, including the tantalizing information that Harper Lee may have another book tucked away, not to be published in her lifetime. Reviewer: Barbara L. TalcroftSchool Library Journal
Gr 7-10
Madden pieces together her subject's life with depth and insight, relying on research trips to Alabama to interview Lee's colleagues and neighbors and to visit places that figure prominently in the writer's story. Through this research, the author paints a nuanced picture of Lee's childhood in Monroeville, AL, and how it informed the writing of To Kill a Mockingbird . Lee's father is said to be the basis for the character of Atticus, Lee's childhood friend Truman Capote was the inspiration for Dill, and there was even a neighbor who resembled Boo Radley. The racial climate in the South and Lee's own observations of segregation and inequality played prominently in the novel and in the Academy Award-winning movie. With the author's new interviews and research, this biography is a valuable resource. There are a few black-and-white photographs and endnotes.-Kristen Oravec, Flint Hill Middle School, Oakton, VA