Title:
Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of 'To Kill a
Mockingbird'
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Millions of high school students have read "To Kill
a Mockingbird." The novel by Harper Lee offers moral
lessons about racial justice and respect. It tells
the story of a young girl named Scout and her
father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer. He defends a black
man wrongfully accused of raping a white woman. In
the end, an all-white jury sentences Tom Robinson to
death. The book is set in the American South in the
nineteen thirties. But it was published fifty years
ago, on July eleventh, nineteen sixty. It came out
as the civil rights movement in the United States
was gaining strength. Laws and customs in the South,
however, still kept blacks and whites mostly
separated. A mockingbird is a kind of gray songbird.
The book gets its title from something Atticus Finch
was told in his childhood when his father gave him a
gun. Atticus Finch says his father told him it was a
sin to kill a mockingbird because they don't hurt
anyone, they just make music. Melinda Byrd-Murphy is
head of the Alabama Center for Literary Arts. She
says the moral of the story is: "Be kind to one
another. Show human empathy and sympathy." Ms.
Byrd-Murphy has read the book four times. She is a
native of Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville,
Alabama. The author, who published only the one
novel, is still alive but rarely speaks publicly.
Some people say "To Kill a Mockingbird" treats
racism in a way that is simplistic, even offensive
to blacks, and out of date in today's America.
Still, it has been translated into more than forty
languages and has sold over forty million copies. It
won a Pulitzer Prize and is often required reading
in high school. Gregory Peck won an Academy Award
for playing Atticus Finch in the nineteen sixty-two
film version. The story takes place in a town that
Harper Lee called Maycomb. But she based the
characters on real people she knew growing up. Since
then, Monroeville has changed a lot. A number of
African-Americans serve in the local government. The
courthouse, made famous by the book, is now a
museum. A small shop and a fast-food restaurant
called Mel's Dairy Dream have replaced Harper Lee's
childhood home.In Monroeville and around the
country, fans of "To Kill a Mockingbird" are
celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. Events include
readings, discussions and movie showings. And that's
the VOA Special English Education Report.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
