Parris is peering into a crumpled paperback with a huge smile on his face.
“Mr. Singer, I love this book…” he says.
He stops, pauses and adds, “I hate what’s happening, but I love the book.”
In my middle school classroom, that’s a pretty routine reaction to Harper Lee’s classic, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
My 8th grade students approach the climax and resolution with equal parts dread and delight.
But it doesn’t always start that way.
No book I teach has gone through a greater change in cultural opinion than “Mockingbird.”
It used to be considered a bastion of anti-racism. Now some folks actually consider it to be racist.
The story is about Scout and her brother Jem as they grow up in Alabama during the Great Depression. Most of the drama centers on their father, Atticus, who…
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Politicians Are Poody Heads 