To Kill A Mockingbird (Family Comic Friday)

As the school year begins to wind down, it's time to start thinking about summer reading. This week's Family Comic Friday looks at a classic novel that recently made it's graphic novel debut. It's also this Madman reviewer's favorite book of all-time: To Kill a Mockingbird.

To Kill a Mockingbird
Written by Harper Lee
Illustrated and Adapted by Fred Fordham
Published by Harper Collins
Pages: 288

Harper Lee's account of prejudice and racism in 1930s Alabama is both equally highly controversial and well regarded. To Kill a Mockingbird won many awards after it debuted in 1960, including the Pulitzer Prize in literature. Since then, as author Lee was awarded a numerous accolades for her work, including Congressional medals, Mockingbird has earned a reputation as one of the most challenged books in both schools and public libraries.

Harper Lee's fictionalized account of her childhood in the Depression era South has an unquestionable anti-racism tone. But Lee's choice to include the N-word has caused many to debate the age appropriateness of the book. A stunning courtroom scene in which black man, Tom Robinson is accused of rape and a peppering of ‘ damns’, 'hells’ and ungentlemanly tones towards women has also been reasons some have called for the book to be banned. I for one am glad that this book’s illustrator and adaptor, Fred Fordham decided not to edit any of these controversial aspects.

I've read To Kill a Mockingbird seven times previously. I'm also familiar with the rough draft, Go Set A Watchman. So I feel that I can legitimately proclaim this late 2018 adaptation to be extremely faithful to the original novel. It even does a superior job to that of the 1962 film version which won several Academy Awards.

Fred Fordham's graphic novel is 5 pages longer than Lee's prose. With Fordham's choice to include Scout Finch's first person narration, there's a tremendous amount of near verbatim passages from the original source material. Some parts, including one of my favorite sequences between Scout, her brother Jem and neighbor boy, Dill has been altered slightly. But for the majority, this book is almost exactly as Harper Lee wrote it.  And it's for this very reason that I am recommending this graphic novel!

In order to get students interested in reading the novels required over the summer by the school system, parents will show the reader a film version of the book. Why not get young adults reading by having them start off with a graphic novel adaptation? Reading  this version, the reader will personally have to draw conclusions about themes and styles, instead of being spoon-fed facts like with Cliff Notes.

Plus thanks to Fred Fordham's clean artwork, readers can better make mental connections with the host of assorted characters that makeup this book.

One thing for sure about this version of Mockingbird, it's going to provoke some very hard questions. So parents and guardians need to be ready to navigate issues of race, gender and even bullying. That doesn't mean that this book is nothing but serious drama. Scout and her friends are kids and they have typical child interactions like dares, play-acting adventures and fun and games. For book full of such serious tones, these light hearted interludes are required.

Get a jump on Summer reading with this adaptation. Or share a beloved classic with the next generation in a the easily accessible medium of sequential art! No matter what your reason, this is a book that any reader around the age of 12 or older should encounter today.

The To Kill a Mockingbird graphic novel debuted in print and digital formats on October 30, 2018.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

 

  The literary event of 2015 asks the question, 'When is a sequel not a sequel?' Though Go Set A Watchman follows up with Scout, Atticus, Jem, Calpurnia, and many more characters from Lee's 1960 masterpiece To Kill A Mockingbird it is not a sequel to the award winning classic. Instead, this book was actually the first draft for Mockingbird.

    Harper Lee finished the manuscript for this book in 1957. Her publisher liked this book but felt that it lacked a concrete plot. Also, editor Tay Hohoff felt that the flashback parts of when Scout, Jem, and Dill were kids were the best parts of the book and encouraged Lee to start over with that time period. 

I'm so glad Harper Lee listened to Hohoff.

    See, Mockingbird is my favorite book of all-time and though I read more comic books than fiction these days, I was counting down the days until this book dropped on July 14th. I'm such a fan of TKAM that I've read the book like 7 times (and it's the only novel I've read more than once, except for school assignments.) I'm such a fan of TKAM, I pre-ordered this book on Amazon. I'm such a fan of TKAM, I even paid a little extra on shipping so that the book was delivered to my door on the day the book came out. 

    Go Set A Watchman is a book fraught with controversy. First many question as to whether this book was actually written by Harper Lee. Some point to her deteriorated state. Born in 1926, the 89-year old Pulitzer Prize winner is now deaf and blind and some critics feel that her guardians pushed for this book's release in order to exploit and extort from the beloved civil rights figure. 

   Another source of controversy is how much Atticus Finch changed from being a champion of the lower class and  people of color during the Depression to a dyed in the wool bigot at the height of the 1950s civil rights movement, particularly eyeing the NAACP as a threat to the way of life of Southern Whites. Such a change left not only only daughter Scout Finch disillusioned but many readers as well. 

    I for one overlook this change in the Finch family patriarch. For one thing as I mentioned earlier, this book was a rough draft. Reports say that Lee put this book in a safe deposit box sometime between 1957 and 1960 and then forgot about it until her lawyers and accountants discovered it in 2014. In her elderly state, I doubt she made any changes to the original manuscript and it was published as-is.

   Another factor that may prove my theory right is Scout's recollection of Atticus' defense of a one-armed black man when she was a little girl. In this book, Tom Robinson was acquitted! Yet in Mockingbird, poor Tom was found guilty despite Atticus proving that Bob Ewell severely beat his daughter Mayella! 

    With inconsistencies between the two novels, readers of this book will need to take it with a grain of salt. Don't read this book as a sequel as much as a return to some of the most beloved characters in 20th Century American literature. The scenes of Scout, Jem, and Dill are the best parts of this book (especially when the trio play Revival.) 

   The rest of the book was quite interesting with Scout returning to her hometown of Maycomb in her 20s from living in the Big Apple for several years (though for the life of me, I have no idea what Jean Louise did for a living as it's not even mentioned.) However, Scout roams around the small town having debates about love, life, and equality while having those childhood flashbacks of her's with any and everyone she meets. Like the main character, this book lacks direction and jumps from place to place as well as points in time from Scout's childhood to becoming a young woman to her previous return visits from up North. 

   Even though this book is like a compass without a needle, Go Set A Watchman is going to become a classic if only for the fact that it's a lost work of the elusive Harper Lee who only wrote one other published book. Watchman is like when JRR Tolkien's son posthumously published scores of the Middle Earth creator's notes and unfinished pieces on the Lord of the Rings trilogy- it gives glimpses of already established and much loved characters but it doesn't change the main body of work published by the author who I might add is a talented storyteller. 

   Since this isn't an official sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird you the reader have every right to accept the parts you enjoyed as canon and reject those you hated. So if you dislike that Atticus Finch becomes more like Archie Bunker when the NAACP comes to town, then you can just say 'That's not how that happened.' You won't be right or wrong. You'll be an observer from afar, watching life in the 1950s Solid South. You may be offended. You may be vindicated. But no matter what view you take, at least you'll be a little entertained when you do.

   Worth Consuming

   Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.