My Mockingbird

Betsy and I finished To Kill A Mockingbird this evening. She loved it so much and was more moved by it than I have seen her by a book before. She said it was the best book she has ever read. She is 12 and it is the best book she has ever read!

I gave her my copy to keep, which was once my Mum's. It is a 1976 edition, has white paint spilled on the front, and a printed price of 70p on the back. It says on the jacket 'Over 11,000,000 copies sold'. It has probably sold five times that by now!

It's nice to think that three generations of the same family have read this particular copy, but my Mum didn't exactly present it to me ceremoniously - I just picked it off a book case one day (something I did throughout my childhood, often with disastrous results - Rosemary's Baby being one that springs immediately to mind!) and just took it with me when I left home.

I first read the book when I was about 17, so it was a real treat to read it with someone who is exactly the same age as one of the children in the book. Betsy's take on reading about two children who are pretty much the same age as her and her brother made me realise how truthful a description of childhood it is - how children that age think, play, how their imaginations work, what scares them and how they see the adults in their world. Most moving though, and what really resonated with me at this particular time in our lives, is how it feels for a brother and a sister as one of them begins to leave childhood as the other is still firmly in it.