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Small Batch: 'To Kill A Mockingbird'

Harper Lee in a courthouse near her hometown of Monroeville, Ala.
Donald Uhrbrock
/
Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
Harper Lee in a courthouse near her hometown of Monroeville, Ala.

We were sad today to learn that Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird (and, much more recently, Go Set A Watchman) had died at 89, so Barrie Hardymon of NPR's Weekend Edition sat down with me to talk about Lee's most famous book and how significant it feels in our respective orbits. We talk a little about its portrayal of its unusual six-year-old protagonist, its respect for the personhood of kids in general, its imperfect but earnest efforts to engage issues of race, and the smaller lessons about kindness that it treats with great seriousness.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.