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The Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling is considered as Young Adult Literature because the primary target audience includes readers between the ages of 12 and 18. The first book, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (or "Sorcerer's Stone" in the U.S.), is particularly suitable for younger teens, while the later books deal with more mature themes that appeal to older teens. The series follows Harry Potter's coming-of-age, as he grows from age 11 to 17, showcasing his growth and development as he navigates the challenges of adolescence.

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All The Bright Places

Romance/Drama

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All the Bright Places is a 2020 American teen romantic drama film, directed by Brett Haley, from a screenplay by Jennifer Niven and Liz Hannah, adapted from the novel of the same name by Niven. It stars Elle Fanning, Justice Smith, Alexandra Shipp, Kelli O'Hara, Lamar Johnson, Virginia Gardner, Felix Mallard, Sofia Hasmik, Keegan-Michael Key, and Luke Wilson.

It was released on February 28, 2020, by Netflix, to positive reviews from critics.

Theodore Finch and Violet Markey are two teenagers who live unhappily in a small Indiana town. She is quietly dealing with survivor's guilt after the death of her sister Eleanor and he is a loner, called a freak by other students.

Finch and Violet meet on the bridge where Eleanor died in a car crash nine months earlier. Violet survived the crash, and has not been in a car since. She finds herself standing on the edge of the bridge on what would have been Eleanor's nineteenth birthday. Finch, out for a run, sees Violet perched on the edge looking in and climbs up next to her, talking her down from a possible suicide.

Finch begins a partnership with an initially reluctant Violet for a school project that requires the students to explore Indiana together. He looks her up on Facebook, researches her sister's car accident, reads through Violet's old writing, and chats with her online. Finch and Violet travel around Indiana to see sites chosen by him for the project.

Violet refuses to travel by car, so they bike to the highest point in Indiana. However, to visit a miniature roller coaster too far away to bike to, she agrees to get in Finch's car. Violet returns to writing, for the first time since Eleanor's death. He helps her talk about her sister, which no one else had managed to do. Violet slowly begins to heal and they fall in love.

Violet notices Finch's occasionally strange behavior. He sometimes disappears for days. One day, while they are swimming at the Blue Hole, Finch disappears under the water. By the time he resurfaces, Violet is distraught and forces him to tell her more about himself, threatening to leave if he doesn't. Finch reveals that he had been physically abused by his father, who sometimes got into "dark moods", and periodically comes close to drowning himself as a means of feeling in control

On one occasion, Finch and Violet stay out all night by accident, upsetting Violet's parents. At school that day, he loses his temper on Violet's ex-boyfriend after being called "freak." The two boys fight, and Finch leaves in his car. Violet, who broke up the fight, ends up in the principal's office with Finch's closest friend, Charlie, who talks to her about him.

Finch attends a support group session, earlier recommended by the school guidance counselor, but nothing fruitful comes of it, partly because he cannot describe his problems. He visits the bar where his sister Kate works and prompts her to speculate on why their father was abusive, and whether he could have been helped. Upset, Kate dismisses the topic, saying she doesn't care, and that their father is someone else's problem now. Disappointed, Finch leaves for their house, where Violet is waiting. As she questions him about the post-it notes put up everywhere, he alludes to his episodes of "dark moods" when he fails to "stay awake." Finally, convinced he is beyond help, shouts at her to leave.

Finch disappears again. As suggested by her father, Violet checks places they had visited together and drives to the Blue Hole. There, she finds Finch's clothes and phone, and correctly infers that he has drowned himself. Some time later, she attends his funeral.

While healing from Finch's suicide, Violet finds the map they used to travel around Indiana and notices the last location they were supposed to visit together marked in red. It's the Travelers' Prayers Chapel, a resting place for travelers and a place of healing for mourners. She finds his signature in the guest book.

In July 2015, it was announced that Elle Fanning would star in All the Bright Places, with author Jennifer Niven writing the adapted screenplay. In July 2015, it was announced that Miguel Arteta would be directing the film. In July 2018, Justice Smith joined the cast of the film, with Brett Haley replacing Arteta as director, and Liz Hannah co-writing the script with Niven. Echo Lake Entertainment and FilmNation Entertainment produced the film, with Fanning, Paula Mazur, Mitchell Kaplan, Doug Mankoff, Andrew Spaulding, and Brittany Kahn serving as producers, while Hannah served as an executive producer.

In October 2018, Alexandra Shipp, Keegan-Michael Key, Luke Wilson, Kelli O'Hara, Virginia Gardner, Felix Mallard, Lamar Johnson, and Sofia Hasmik joined the cast of the film, with Netflix distributing. Principal photography began on October 4, 2018, in Elyria, Ohio.

The film was released on February 28, 2020 through Netflix.

As of October 2021, All The Bright Places holds a 64% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 39 reviews, with an average of 6.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Though it at times buckles under the emotional weight of its source material, All The Bright Place [] succeeds on the strength of Elle Fanning and Justice Smith's charming and tender performances." On Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 61 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Kimber Myers of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a positive review writing: "Though it's not without humor, "All the Bright Places" takes teens' emotions seriously and will move romantics of any age - in possibly unexpected ways". Courtney Howard of gave the film a positive review writing: "Its pure beating heart and humanistic undertones make it somewhat of a standout". Candice Frederick of The New York Times also gave the film a positive review writing: "Smith and Fanning bring thoughtful performances to this delicate tale." Benjamin Lee of The Guardian gave the film 2 out of 5 stars writing: "There's messaging inserted near the start of the end credits for those who might be affected by the themes raised. But it doesn't negate what comes before it: a film that lingers briefly in the deep end but remains disappointingly shallow."

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All the Bright Places (film) - Wikipedia

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All the Bright Places is a 2020 American teen romantic drama film, directed by Brett Haley, from a screenplay by Jennifer Niven and Liz Hannah, adapted from the novel of the same name by Niven. It stars Elle Fanning, Justice Smith, Alexandra Shipp, Kelli O'Hara, Lamar Johnson, Virginia Gardner, Felix Mallard, Sofia Hasmik, Keegan-Michael Key, and Luke Wilson.

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The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee can be considered as Young Adult Literature as it features the protagonist Scout Finch's coming-of-age journey. As Scout matures, she learns important life lessons about morality, justice, and empathy. These themes are relevant to young adults who are in the process of forming their own values and beliefs. Moreover, Scout is a young protagonist, since readers often relate to characters close to their own age, Scout helps them better connect with the themes and events in the novel.

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The novel One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus is a Young Adult Literature as the story is set in a high school environment, a familiar setting for Young Adult readers. The events unfold within the context of high school life, including classes, relationships, social hierarchies, and extracurricular activities. Throughout the novel, the characters undergo significant personal growth and development. They confront their own flaws, secrets, and insecurities, learning important lessons about identity, friendship, and integrity. This journey of self-discovery and maturation is a key element of Young Adult Literature.

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Firework-Katy Perry

encourages people to discover (or rediscover) that ‘spark’ within themselves which is their true spirit or essence, the thing which will bring them alive and show the world what they are capable of.

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The Climb- Miley Cyrus

to inform others that life is a beautiful adventure, and in order to achieve your goals, you have to encounter some obstacles, but that's the beauty of the adventure

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Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher can be considered as Young Adult Literature as it tackles serious and contemporary issues that are highly relevant to young adults. For instance, the story revolves around themes like bullying and peer pressure, mental health issues, sexual assault, and suicide. Such events resemble the challenges and complexities of teenage life, thus making the story relatable to young adults.

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• lyrical narrative - horror

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The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, read by Neil Gaiman

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Goosebumps

Horror/Family

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Goosebumps is a 2015 American horror comedy film directed by Rob Letterman and written by Darren Lemke, based on R. L. Stine's children's horror book series of the same name. The film stars Jack Black as a fictionalized version of Stine, who teams up with his neighbor ( Dylan Minnette) and his teenage daughter ( Odeya Rush), to save their hometown after all the monsters from the Goosebumps franchise escape from his works, wreaking havoc in the real world. It also stars Amy Ryan, Ryan Lee, and Jillian Bell in supporting roles.

Development on a Goosebumps film adaptation began in the 1990s with Tim Burton and George A. Romero attached to direct. After failing to find a script to determine which book to adapt, the project was halted. In early 2008, Columbia acquired the rights to create a Goosebumps-based film, and the project reentered development. Principal photography lasted from April to July 2014 in Candler Park, Atlanta.

Goosebumps was theatrically released in the United States on October 16, 2015, by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film received positive reviews from critics, with praise for its humor, pacing, and faithfulness to the Goosebumps franchise.

A sequel titled Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween was released on October 12, 2018.

After his father's death, teenage Zach Cooper and his mother Gale move from New York City to Madison, Delaware, where Gale has gotten a new job as the vice-principal of its local high school. Setting in the neighborhood, Zach meets his neighbor Hannah, whose overprotective father tells him to stay away from her. Zach also befriends a cowardly but friendly student named Champ during his first day at the school. Hannah invites Zach to an abandoned amusement park where they get know each other. Upon returning home, Hannah's father again warns him to stay away from them.

That same night, Gale has to supervise a school dance and leaves Zach with his aunt, Lorraine. Fearing Hannah is in danger, Zach tricks her father into going to the police station while he and Champ enter his house. They find a bookshelf with numerous locked manuscripts that catalog entries from the Goosebumps series. In response to Champ's curiosity about them, Zach unlocks the one cataloging The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena and the story's titular character emerges from it. With Hannah's help, they track the monster to an ice rink where Hannah's father appears and reimprisons it in the manuscript.

Hannah's father unwittingly reveals himself as R. L. Stine, the creator of the Goosebumps franchise; he originally wrote the stories to cope with severe bullying but his creations became real as result of his overactive imagination and he was forced to keep them imprisoned in their manuscripts. Back at Stine's house, the quartet encounter Slappy the Dummy from the Night of the Living Dummy series, now freed from his manuscript. Seeking revenge on Stine for his imprisonment, Slappy incinerates the manuscript, which leaves no other way to reimprison him and his brethren, and escapes with the others. He opens the manuscript titled The Haunted Car that frees the possessed car and uses it as an escape vehicle. The quartet are then attacked by the eponymous garden gnomes of Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes as they attempt to escape from the house.

Slappy releases several of his fellow monsters, causing havoc around Madison. Meanwhile, Lorraine is attacked by vampiric poodle Fifi from Please Don't Feed the Vampire!. Zach convinces Stine to recapture the monsters by writing a single story, but it can only be done using his supernatural typewriter currently on display at the school. En route, the quartet is attacked by Brent Green from My Best Friend is Invisible and the giant mantis from A Shocker on Shock Street, forcing them to seek refuge in the local supermarket. Will Blake from The Werewolf of Fever Swamp chases and corners them in its parking lot where he is run over by Lorraine, who narrowly escaped from Fifi.

The quartet cut through a cemetery, during which Zach sees Hannah becoming ghost-like in the moonlight before they are attacked by the titular characters of Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls. At the school, Stine confesses to Zach that his daughter is Hannah Fairchild from The Ghost Next Door, whom he originally created to cope with his loneliness. They find the typewriter and Stine starts writing a story based on the events around them while Zach and Champ attempt to warn everyone, but nobody believes them until the mantis attacks the building.

Slappy releases the rest of the monsters and commands them to attack the school. Despite the best efforts of the school's staff and student body of keeping the monsters out, they break in nonetheless. Slappy finds Stine and breaks his fingers with the typewriter's case before he can finish the story. To ensure everyone's safety, the quartet trick the monsters into following a school bus rigged with explosives while they board another and drive to the abandoned amusement park. Realizing the ruse, Slappy tracks them down and releases the titular monster from The Blob That Ate Everyone as the other monsters arrive. Stine confronts it and is devoured while Zach, Hannah, and Champ take refuge in the park's ferris wheel where Zach finishes the story before the mantis causes the structure to collapse and roll towards the forest. After surviving the ordeal, Zach refuses to open the story's manuscript because Hannah will also be sucked in, but Hannah reveals she knew the truth about herself all along and opens it, sucking all the monsters and herself inside as she bid farewell to Zach before accepting her fate.

Some time later, Stine begins working as a teacher at the school while starting a relationship with Lorraine. After class, he reveals to Zach that he brought Hannah back into reality by writing a new copy of her book. As Zach and Hannah leave together, Stine incinerates the copy but then finds his typewriter writing by itself before he himself leaves. To his horror, Brent Green is revealed to have been omitted in his fellow monsters' reimprisonment and is using the typewriter to write a new Goosebumps story titled The Invisible Boy's Revenge.

Jack Black as R. L. Stine, the creator and writer of the Goosebumps books and franchise, attempting to keep his identity secret. Black was credited for this film, but was not credited for its sequel.

Black also provides the voice of Slappy the Dummy from the Night of the Living Dummy series. Avery Lee Jones and Jake McKinnon provided the puppeteer work for Slappy.

Black also provides the voice of Brent Green, the invisible boy from My Best Friend is Invisible.

Odeya Rush as Hannah Fairchild / Hannah Stine, Stine's daughter and Zach's new neighbor and love interest, who is secretly Hannah Fairchild from The Ghost Next Door, a character of Stine's brought to life, whom he decided to raise himself.

Keith Arthur Bolden as Principal Garrison, the principal of Madison High School.

Amanda Lund as Officer Brooks, a police officer trainee partnered with Officer Stevens.

Karan Soni as Mr. Rooney, a teacher at Madison High School.

Caleb Emery as a dumb jock that gets attacked by the giant mantis from A Shocker on Shock Street.

John Bernecker as the uncredited motion-capture performance of Will Blake, the titular werewolf from The Werewolf of Fever Swamp.

The real R. L. Stine has a cameo as Jack Black (a pun that R . L . Stine in the movie is played by Jack Black) appears as a drama teacher at Madison High School, credited as "Hallway Player". Kumail Nanjiani and Luka Jones appear as two movers who encounter Slappy in an alternate opening sequence featured on home media releases.

In the mid 1990s, George A. Romero wrote a script for a film adaptation of the first original Goosebumps book Welcome to Dead House. It was rejected and was then kept at The University of Pittsburgh.[18]

The popularity of the Fox Kids' Goosebumps television series generated an interest among fans for a full-feature film based upon the show. In 1998, Tim Burton was attached to direct a Goosebumps film for 20th Century Fox. Chris Meledandri, the president of Fox Family Films at the time, said, "I think you'll see us tackling a scale of story that would be prohibitive to do on the small screen".[19] However, the film did not materialize since they could not find a script they liked or determine which book to adapt into a film.[20]

In 2008, Columbia Pictures acquired rights to create a Goosebumps film.[21] Neal Moritz and Deborah Forte, the latter of whom had previously worked on the Goosebumps television series in the 1990s, were chosen to produce the film.[22] Screenwriting team Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski were hired as screenwriters,[23] and wrote the original script for the film. The duo decided against adapting any one book in the series, feeling the individual books in the series were too short. Thinking of ways to create a universe where all the creatures in the books could live together, they elected to do a fake biographical film where R. L. Stine writes a book and the monsters within it become real.[24] In 2010, Carl Ellsworth was chosen to write the screenplay.[25] On January 14, 2012, it was reported that a new draft of the screenplay would be written by Darren Lemke; Lemke co-wrote the screenplays for Shrek Forever After and Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Slayer.[26] In November 2012, Stine expressed pessimism about the prospect of the film, saying that he would believe that a film can be based on his Goosebumps series when he sees it. The screenplay was rated PG-13. He also mentioned Where the Wild Things Are being adapted into a film almost 50 years after publication.[27]

Jack Black "fighting" Slappy and his fellow monsters at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con International.

The film marks the third collaboration between Jack Black and director Rob Letterman, who previously worked together on Shark Tale and Gulliver's Travels

In September 2013, it was reported that Jack Black was in talks to "play a Stine-like author whose scary characters literally leap off the page, forcing him to hide from his own creepy creations".[28] Black stated that he tried to make the character "more of a sort of curmudgeonly dark, brooding beast master". He also said that he attempted to approach this film the same way he does others, trying to "make it as funny as possible".[29] Black met with R. L. Stine to get his consent for the film, but determined that his character could not be too similar to the real one; Black explained that he needed the character to be more sinister.[30] Rob Letterman was chosen as the director, reuniting him with Black, after working together on Shark Tale and Gulliver's Travels.[28]

It was announced in February 2014 that Dylan Minnette had been cast as Zach Cooper,[31] and Odeya Rush as the Stine-like author's daughter, Hannah.[5] On February 26, 2014, it was announced that the film would be released on March 23, 2016.[32][33] On April 4, 2014, it was announced that Amy Ryan and Jillian Bell had joined the cast as Cooper's mother and aunt respectively.[11] On April 10, 2014, Ken Marino joined the cast as Coach Carr.[15] On April 28, 2014, Halston Sage joined the cast.[12] On May 1, 2014, the film's release date was moved up to August 7, 2015.[34] Stine stated on May 20, 2014, that he was going to make a cameo appearance in the film.[17]

The film was promoted at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con International where Jack Black and Rob Letterstein interacted with Slappy the Dummy. Slappy even brought some of his "friends" out consisting of the Bog Monster from How to Kill a Monster, two Graveyard Ghouls from Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls, Cronby the Troll and a Mulgani from Deep in the Jungle of Doom, the Lord High Executioner from A Night in Terror Tower, Murder the Clown from A Nightmare on Clown Street, the Mummy of Prince Khor-Ru from Return of the Mummy, Captain Long Ben One-Leg from Creep from the Deep, Professor Shock from The Creepy Creations of Professor Shock, Count Nightwing from Vampire Breath, a Creep from Calling All Creeps!, a Body Squeezer from Invasion of the Body Squeezers: Part 1 and Part 2, Carly Beth Caldwell's Haunted Mask form from The Haunted Mask, a Scarecrow from The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight, and a Pumpkin Head from Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns. When Jack Black tells Slappy that it is him that Slappy wants, Slappy instructs the Lord High Executioner, Murder the Clown, and Professor Shock to take Jack Black outside to his car. As the monsters leave, Slappy tells Rob some of his pitches causing Rob to leave as well.[35][36]

Some monsters due for an appearance in the film were cut for budgetary reasons, but Letterman stated that the crew tried to choose the monsters most appropriate to the story. Letterman also stated that he tried to combine both humor and horror in the film, commenting that "[t]he books themselves are legitimately scary, but they're legitimately funny, and we try to capture that".[30] In November 2014, the release date was moved back to April 15, 2016.[37] In January 2015, the release date was pushed forward to October 16, 2015.[38][39]

In mid-April 2014, a crew of six spent three days gathering visual data for the film in downtown Madison, Georgia. The crew used a theodolite to collect points in three-dimensional space to complete a detailed survey of the city. The visual data was used to create a CGI background of the downtown.[40] Neal Moritz and Rob Letterman stated that Madison was their first choice for the film after scouting the city.[41] Principal photography on the film began on April 23, 2014, in Candler Park in Atlanta, notably at 345 (Zach's house) and 337 (R.L.Stine's house) Mell Avenue NE;[42] they were also set to shoot the film in Conyers and Madison.[5] On May 19, filming was taking place in the streets of Madison,[43] with 480 Goosebumps crew members working in Madison and Morgan County.[41] Principal photography ended on July 16, 2014.[44] A stretch of Dawsonville Highway in Georgia was intermittently closed to film a car travelling up and down multiple bridges for the film.[45]

The soundtrack for the film, featuring original music composed by Danny Elfman, was released on CD on October 23, 2015, by Sony Classical Records. The digital version was released by Madison Gate Records the week before.

Songs featured in the film

Goosebumps had its world premiere screening on June 24, 2015, at the CineEurope film distributors' trade fair in Barcelona, Spain, where the film was presented by Black on stage.

Goosebumps was released on Blu-ray (2D and 3D) and DVD on January 5, 2016, and includes deleted scenes, a blooper reel, interviews with the cast and crew, an alternate opening, an alternate ending, and a featurette about Slappy.

Goosebumps grossed $80.1 million in North America and $70.1 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $150.2 million, against a budget of $58 million.

In the United States and Canada, pre-release trackings indicated the film would open to between $20-31 million at 3,501 theaters. However, Sony was more conservative, and projected the film to take between $12-15 million. The film opened on October 16, 2015, alongside Bridge of Spies, Crimson Peak, and , however box office pundits noted that it did not face serious competition except for The Martian, which was entering its third week. It made $600,000 from its early Thursday night screenings at 2,567 theaters, and $7.4 million on its opening day. In its opening weekend the film grossed $23.5 million, beating studio projections and finishing first at the box office. It marked the fourth Sony film to reign at the top of the box office during the fall. Previously the studio scored No. 1 spots over the last seven weeks with , The Perfect Guy and Hotel Transylvania 2. Families represented the largest demographics with 60%, followed by under 25 with 59% and male/female ratio was split evenly at 50/50.

Outside North America, Goosebumps was released in a total of 66 countries. Mexico has so far represented its largest opening as well as the biggest market in terms of total earnings with $7.1 million followed by Australia ($6.3 million) and the United Kingdom and Ireland ($6 million). It opened at No. 1 in the United Kingdom and Ireland ($3.9 million). In the United Kingdom, preview takings helped Goosebumps top the box office ahead of the more heavily hyped . In Russia, it opened at No. 2 behind In the Heart of the Sea with $1.27 million. Furthermore, it opened in France with $1 million.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 78% based on 161 reviews, with an average rating of 6.38/10. The site's critical consensus reads, " Goosebumps boasts more than enough of its spooky source material's kid-friendly charm to make up for some slightly scattershot humor and a hurried pace." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 60 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Kevin P. Sullivan of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B rating, citing at the end of his review: "Nothing about Goosebumps is revolutionary-at a certain point you may realize that it's as if Nickelodeon produced Cabin in the Woods-but it's a never-boring trip to a world, where stories and imagination are powerful tools, that just might inspire kids to do the scariest thing of all: pick up a book".

Geoff Berkshire of wrote: "The ADD overload combined with an understandably kid-friendly approach to horror (no one's ever in real danger, and the monsters are never too scary) results in a disposable product intended to appeal to everyone but likely to resonate with no one."

Development of a sequel was reported in September 2015. Rob Letterman intended to return to direct, but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, and Ari Sandel replaced him. Jack Black and Odeya Rush were set to reprise their roles as R. L. and Hannah Stine; Black's role was reduced to an uncredited cameo and Rush's role was ultimately cut. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween was released in the United States on October 12, 2018.

In April 2020, it was announced that a reboot live-action TV series was in the works by Scholastic Entertainment, Sony Pictures Television Studios, and Neal H. Moritz's production company Original Film, who produced the 2015 film and its sequel. In March 2021, R.L. Stine stated that the series found a producer and director. In February 2022, it was announced that the series will be heading to Disney+.

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Goosebumps is a 2015 American horror comedy film directed by Rob Letterman and written by Darren Lemke, based on R. L. Stine's children's horror book series of the same name.

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pressures and struggles of meeting parental expectations

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Simple Plan - Perfect (Official Video) [HD]

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Superbad

Comedy/Friendship

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Superbad is a 2007 American coming-of-age teen buddy comedy film directed by Greg Mottola, written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and produced by Judd Apatow. It stars Jonah Hill and Michael Cera as Seth and Evan, two teenagers about to graduate from high school. Before graduating, the boys want to party and lose their virginity, but their plan proves harder than expected.

Rogen and Goldberg wrote the script during their teenage years. It is loosely based on their experience in Grade 12 at Point Grey Secondary School in Vancouver during the 1990s. The main characters have the same given names as the two writers. Rogen was also initially intended to play Seth, but due to age and physical size this was changed, and Hill went on to portray Seth, while Rogen portrayed the irresponsible Officer Michaels, opposite Saturday Night Live star Bill Hader as Officer Slater.

Superbad premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on August 13, 2007. Upon release, the film received positive reviews, with critics praising the dialogue and the chemistry between the two leads as well as the performances of the supporting cast. The film also proved financially successful, grossing over $170 million on a $17.5-20 million budget. This movie also marked the film debut of Emma Stone.

Seth and Evan are childhood best friends and high school seniors who are about to go off to different colleges. Seth's love interest, Jules, invites him to a party at her house. Seth and Evan's friend Fogell plans to obtain a fake ID, so Seth promises to buy Jules alcohol for the party. Evan runs into his own love interest, Becca, and offers to get her a specific bottle of vodka.

Despite the obviously fake ID, Fogell successfully buys the liquor under the mononym "McLovin", but is knocked out by a robber. When police officers Slater and Michaels arrive, Seth and Evan, who are outside, believe that Fogell is being arrested. In fact, the officers have agreed to give "McLovin" a ride to the party.

While outside the liquor store, Seth is hit by a motorist. In exchange for Seth and Evan not telling the police, the driver promises to take them to another party, where they can get alcohol. Meanwhile, Slater and Michaels take Fogell on a ride-along and then bond with him. Despite being on duty, they start drinking, use their sirens improperly, and shoot at a stop sign.

At the party, Seth fills laundry detergent bottles from the basement with alcohol and dances with a drunk girl. She stains his leg with menstrual blood, while a group of intoxicated men make Evan sing " These Eyes" for them. Seth is confronted by the party's host for dancing with his fiancée, and a brawl ensues; the police are called, while Seth and Evan escape.

Seth begins to chastise Evan for bailing on him; explaining that they had made childhood plans to go to college together but Evan got accepted into Dartmouth College. Evan retorts that Seth is selfish and has held him back for years, concluding he does not want Seth to slow him down anymore. As they begin to argue more, Seth is again hit by a car - the police cruiser driven by Slater and Michaels. They plan to pin the blame of the crash on Seth, but as Fogell emerges from the car, Evan makes a run for it, and Seth and Fogell escape with the alcohol. Eventually, all three make their way to Jules' party.

At the party, Fogell inadvertently reveals that he and Evan will be rooming together at college, upsetting Seth. Seth's stories of the night's antics make him popular, while Becca wants to have sex with Evan, who declines since she is drunk.

Meanwhile, Fogell impresses Nicola, a foreign exchange student, and goes upstairs to have sex with her. Seth drunkenly attempts to kiss Jules, but she turns him down because she neither drinks nor wants Seth while he is drunk. He believes he has ruined his chances with her, then passes out, accidentally headbutting Jules and giving her a black eye.

Slater and Michaels bust the party. Seth wakes up and escapes, carrying an intoxicated Evan. Slater busts in on Fogell and Nicola about to have sex, causing her to run off. Slater yells at Fogell for ditching them, but Michaels points out they just interrupted him. They apologize and reveal they knew all along that Fogell was underage but played along, wanting to show him that cops can have fun too. To make it up to Fogell, they handcuff him and make a spectacle of perp-walking him to their cruiser, which is highly effective in making him look "badass". They resume their bonding, eventually destroying their car with a Molotov cocktail while Fogell shoots it with Slater's M1911 pistol.

Seth and Evan have a sleepover at Evan's, where Seth reveals that he learned weeks earlier that Evan and Fogell planned to live together at college. Evan admits he does not want to room with Fogell but is afraid to live with strangers. They apologize to each other before reconciling.

The next day, Seth and Evan visit the mall and run into Jules and Becca. Becca and Seth apologize for their drunken behavior, and the boys pair off with the girls: Seth takes Jules to buy concealer for the black eye he gave her, while Evan and Becca leave to buy a comforter to replace the one she drunkenly vomited on.

Superbad was written by Goldberg and Rogen during their teen years. It is loosely based on their own experience as seniors in Vancouver in the late 1990s, hence the character names Seth and Evan. Other characters and references were influenced by Goldberg and Rogen's adolescence, such as Steven Glanzberg, their peer at Point Grey Secondary School, characterized in the film as a loner. According to an interview at an event panel in 2009, Fogell was also a real friend of Rogen and Goldberg. Rogen was initially slated to play Hill's character Seth, but due to his physical size and age, he played one of the police officers. When asked where he wants to be dropped off, Fogell tells the officers to take him to 13th and Granville, a nod to Rogen and Goldberg's favorite all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant in Vancouver. Superbad took seven years to complete from early scripting in 2000 and filming from 2006 to 2007.[citation needed ] Among the films that served as inspiration for Superbad were Dazed and Confused, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and American Graffiti.

The film was primarily shot in Los Angeles in 2006. Exterior shots of the high school were filmed at El Segundo High School. The mall scenes were shot at the Fox Hills Mall in Culver City, California.

Other filming locations include the convenience store at the beginning of the film, also in Culver City, the liquor store where "McLovin" gets IDed in Glendale, California, and the bar where the cops take McLovin for a drink is neighboring Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The scene where McLovin and the cops do donuts in the cop car was filmed in a parking lot on the California State University, Northridge campus.

Mintz-Plasse was 17 at the time of filming Superbad, and as a result, his mother was required to be present on set during the filming of his sex scene.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg at a Superbad panel at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2007

Superbad opened at number one at the United States box office, grossing US$33,052,411 in its opening weekend from 2,948 theaters for an average of US$11,212 per theater.[16] The film stayed at #1 the second week, grossing US$18,044,369.[16]

The film grossed US$121.5 million in the United States and Canada and US$48.4 million in other countries, for a total of US$169.9 million worldwide. Compared to the budget of $17.5-20 million, the film earned a huge financial profit,[4][3] making it the highest domestic grossing high school comedy at the time (it was surpassed by 21 Jump Street, a film also starring Hill, in 2012).[17]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 87% based on reviews from 207 critics, with an average rating of 7.40/10. The website's consensus reads, "Deftly balancing vulgarity and sincerity while placing its protagonists in excessive situations, Superbad is an authentic take on friendship and the overarching awkwardness of the high school experience."[18] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 76/100 based on 36 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[19] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A− on scale of A to F.[20]

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle called it 2007's most successful comedy.[21] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times had the headline of his review read "McLovin It", and gave the film 31⁄2 out of 4 stars, and said "The movie reminded me a little of National Lampoon's Animal House, except that it's more mature, as all movies are."[22] Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times said "Physically, Hill and Cera recall the classic comic duos- Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Aykroyd and Belushi. But they are contemporary kids, sophisticated and sensitive to nuance"; she added, "I hope it's not damning the movie with the wrong kind of praise to say that for a film so deliriously smutty, Superbad is supercute."[23] Sean Burns of Philadelphia Weekly said "2007: the year Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen saved movie comedy", a reference to Knocked Up which was released in June.[24] Devin Gordon of Newsweek said "As a Revenge of the Nerds redux, Superbad isn't perfect. But it's super close."[25]

In a more critical vein, Stephen Farber of The Hollywood Reporter, compared the film to other films with a single-day structure, such as American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused, but said that Superbad "doesn't have the smarts or the depths of those ensemble comedies."[26] The Hollywood Reporter review was referenced in the film's DVD audio commentary, particularly the review's suggestion that the two main characters have a homoerotic experience similar to the film Y Tu Mamá También.[27] Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel called the film a "super-derivative, super-raunchy sack of laughs" and a "great vulgarian send-off to the summer of Knocked Up" that plays like "Freaks and Geeks: Uncensored."[28] Moore concluded, "The energy flags as it overstays its welcome. The Apatow Rule, 'If it gets a laugh, don't cut it,' doesn't do movies under his banner any favors. Still, there are plenty of those laughs, from the ruder-than-rude opening to the ironic-sentimental ending."[28] Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe said the film "has a degree more sophistication than Revenge of the Nerds and American Pie, and less than the underrated House Party." Morris also said, "the few smart observations could have come from an episode of one of Apatow's TV shows" and "I wanted to find this as funny as audiences did."[29]

The film was listed as #487 on Empire's 500 Greatest films of all time.[30]

Retrospectively since its release, it has garnered acclaim as one of the best comedies of the 2000s and as one of the best high school movies of all time. It has been hailed as one of the defining movies of the Millennial generation.

Two tie-in books to the film were published by Newmarket Press:

Superbad: The Illustrated Moviebook (ISBN 9781557047984) was published on December 4, 2007, to coincide with the release of the film on DVD. This official companion book includes an introduction by producer Judd Apatow; the complete script by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg; commentaries by Apatow, Rogen and Goldberg, and journalists from Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly; 56 film stills; "Mr. Vagtastic Guide to Buying Porn;" and 24 "phallographic" drawings by David Goldberg that viewers will recognize from the film's end credits.

Superbad: The Drawings (ISBN 9781557048080) was published on February 14, 2008. This gift hardcover art book contains 82 "phallographic" drawings created by David Goldberg (Evan Goldberg's brother) for the film.

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Superbad is a 2007 American coming-of-age teen buddy comedy film directed by Greg Mottola, written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and produced by Judd Apatow. It stars Jonah Hill and Michael Cera as Seth and Evan, two teenagers about to graduate from high school.

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Misfits (TV Series 2009–2013) ⭐ 8.2 | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

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2. Poem - The Pink Summer Sphere by Suh Joon Kim

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2. Poem - The Pink Summer Sphere by Suh Joon Kim

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Haiku

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This story is great for young adults because it talks about surviving tough situations, which many teens can relate to. It explores deep feelings and important issues like loss, hope, and finding meaning after a disaster. The language is simple but powerful, making it easy for young readers to connect with the characters and their struggles.

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What has four faces, eight arms, and can't tell time? The clock tower at Union Station.

Four clocks on the tower and none of them run? I mean, what're the odds?

I peer up at the time and shade my eyes. It's 6:47 pm. Always is, always will be. And all anyone knows is that on a Monday the world was a loud, frantic place and Tuesday it wasn't.

Tuesday? Really? The world should've ended on a Saturday. Saturdays are fun. Used to be anyway.

But no. We get eternal friggin Tuesday afternoon where nothing changes.

Ever.

Good news though- we're not alone at the Station. A couple dozen unlucky stragglers were in Union Station with Dad and me when the Big Sleep- I call it The BS - stopped Time two-and-a-half years ago. There's a couple of amateur scientists trapped with us here I call The Eggheads. Dad says to keep that name to myself.

Dad's the only thing that keeps me from running headlong into the subway tunnels where you shouldn't go. There's monsters lurking down there. Or maybe something worse.

"You think we'll get another volunteer?" Tired of looking at the clock tower I bug Dad instead. His eyes hide behind the smoky brown Ray-Bans he's owned since he was eighteen. He considers my question like it's a teachable moment. In another world he's a sixth grade teacher. Here, he's just Dad.

He rests his hand on the lifeless monster looming over us. The hulking Metrolink train is a rusting metal dinosaur guarding Track 6A. It can't move, which is just fine. There's nowhere to go. Dad frowns as he peers into a vacant train car.

"I expect so, kiddo," he grunts.

His white Dallas Cowboys jersey is too big for his small frame. Makes him look like a refugee in some dingy dive bar. But I guess when your shopping mall is the Lost and Found at the End of the World, beggars can't be choosers. Dad waves a hand at the train tracks and a light wind balloons his sleeve open. I can see how scrawny and wrinkled his arm is as he affectionately pats the side of the train.

"Thirty-six miles to Clarita. Plenty of fuel in her and she's nothing more than a big paperweight," Dad says. "Used to get almost three-miles-per gallon. Though your actual mileage may vary."

He grins. The world might stop but adult humor doesn't get funnier. It just gets cornier.

He pulls his hand away and absently wipes his palm on his worn jeans.

"How come we never have volunteers run the O.C. tracks?"

Dad turns away and looks at the never setting sun hanging in the clear sky.

"I want a volunteer to run the track to Santa Clarita Station. I used to know someone there."

"If you had one." It comes out harsh. More softly I add, "A volunteer."

Dad laughs. A humorless sound.

"Getting harder to find those, kiddo. Who can blame them?"

"Maybe it's our turn," I blurt out. Dad flinches, yet we don't get struck by lightning. "You and me, Dad. We could run the tracks together down to the beach. Have a Daddy/Daughter Day."

"I'll find a volunteer. Santa Clarita will pan out," Dad says, ignoring me. "We'll get answers there. Got a good feeling about this one. Just because Riverside and Santa Barbara got gobbled up by The Anomaly doesn't mean Santa Clarita's gone."

The Anomaly. I hate it when he calls it that. The Eggheads are rubbing off on Dad. Not a good look on him. Dad taught science. Does it make him a physicist here in BS World?

He has his little experiments. Sort of like those space probes NASA sent off into the solar system. Only instead of satellites combing the Universe for cosmic stuff, Dad's probes are refugee volunteers he sends to run the tracks, searching for signs of life on Earth beyond Union Station. People-probes who volunteer when they get sick enough of Forever Tuesday in a train station after the aliens obliterated the rest of the world. (That's my theory. My competition says it was a nuclear error. Jeez, I hate the Eggheads.)

"Maybe we should have a reverse lottery," I suggest. If Dad's gonna ignore me, why not change tactics? "Loser runs the tracks to San Clemente."

"That's nice, kiddo." He's pretending to not listen. "There's answers out there." Dad stares at the sun that never moves, never rises or sets, in the blue, L.A. sky. "In Santa Clarita." Heavy sigh.

Dad looks like he could use a beer right about now. If there any were left in the refrigerated cold cases in the food courtyard- long since looted- I'd happily skip down the tunnel and grab one for him. But there's none left to drink. Long ago sucked down by us Union Station captives of The BS. Of course there's always the greenish spew that sputters out of the water fountains.

I don't understand Dad's determination. So far, there's been seven volunteers who ventured out beyond the station after The BS.

Two marched out the front entrance beneath the four frozen clocks in front of Union Station our second day here and disappeared down Alameda Street.

Five ran the tracks, one towards Glendale, the other towards Ventura, the rest to the east.

Not a single volunteer returned. No one came back describing what the Big Sleep did with the rest of the world. My opinion? The BS wants us to find nothing. It's highly efficient at erasing things. Union Station is the only world left and that's all.

"What about the Eggheads?" I ask. "They just sit around having science debates."

It's true. Like, 'What's the true age of the Big Bang?'

Or, 'Where does all the antimatter in the Universe go?'

And, 'If a neutron farts in a black hole and no astronauts are around to hear it, does it make a noise?'

That last one's mine actually. Dad doesn't think it's funny, but I think it's a hoot.

"We can't force them to volunteer," Dad says. "Contradicts the definition."

I stare at the back of his neck. It's tough leather broiled a deep shade of burnt umber. It somehow seems sad and makes him look vulnerable.

"I'm going down," I say a little too loudly. "Downstairs."

Dad starts, looks over at me, eyebrows raised over his sunglasses.

I shrug and add, "Girl stuff. Um. Unless you need me here?"

Dad shakes his head. "No, it's all right, kiddo. You go on." He chuckles. "I want to watch the sun not going down."

I consider telling him. Telling him what I'm going to do. Instead I lie.

"I'll be back in fifteen minutes."

"Take your time," he says. "And kiddo?" He pauses without turning around. "I know you're sick of this- this sorry excuse for a future."

My eyes well up and I'm grateful he has his back to me.

"But I'm going to get you out of this place. I promise."

I swallow a sob and shuffle down the ramp to the underground passenger transit hallway where I stop and look back. Dad's staring after me and I feel a twinge of guilt in my guts. I flash a smile and wave. He nods, turns away, and I start walking.

I don't expect to run into anyone. When I practically crash into the Egghead I nearly yelp.

"Sorry." A thin, nasal voice squeaks out. There's a flash of spiky, ginger-colored hair over a rail thin body; the sour odor of sweat in my nose. A pair of piercing blue eyes are too close to my face and I back up a step.

"No problem," I mumble. I glare at him and his face crumbles. The Egghead turns and practically runs down the tunnel.

I watch to make sure he doesn't stick around. I'm glad I do when he stops.

"Do you miss the people?" His voice bounces off the concrete walls of the tunnel.

"What?" I don't have the patience for this so my voice comes out pinched.

"People. I miss people. My friends. Family. Don't you miss the people? You know. Your friends from school? Your mom? We might end up living forever like this. Be nice to have the people we love here, don't you think?"

I want to march over to him, reach out and grab him by his chicken neck, and shout in his face, 'I do have someone I love here, dumbass!"

But I just roll my eyes and laugh.

"Who the hell wants to live forever?"

The Eggheag throws me a funny look. Then he shrugs, turns and pads off down the hall. When he's just a dot at the end of the tunnel I breath a sigh of relief.

Don't you miss the people?

What a stupid question.

Before I make the walk to the connecting ramp leading up to Track 10B, I stop and glance east towards the subway station near the old, busted up aquarium. The fish were scooped out and eaten in the first days of The BS.

Now, no one crunches over the broken glass to visit the dirty, moss covered mosaics there, or stare at the shattered remains of the aquarium. Nobody braves the Red/Purple Line across the way. It's best to avoid the subway tunnels once connecting L.A. County like giant arteries snaking across the region. I shiver when the subway calls to me. Maybe the ghosts are warning me off my plan.

A loud voice in my head shouts at me and I bolt. Gray concrete walls flash past as I run. All thoughts of empty, haunted subways flicker and fade in my mad dash.

I skitter to a stop under a shiny, white clock bulging from a wall near the platform tunnel.

6:47 pm, it laughs down at me.

"Suck it!" I hiss at the frozen face.

Embarrassed, I glance around, but no one's here. The tunnel is just one more ghost town and I'm the only ghost haunting it.

When I emerge on Platform 10B, Dad's there. Waiting for me. I can't say why, but I'm not surprised.

"You weren't going to say goodbye, kiddo?" he whispers, his voice hoarse.

I smile weakly and shrug.

"You were right." This time he's the one holding back tears. "It's our turn. And by 'our' I mean your turn. I can't go with you, kiddo."

"I know." I'm whispering. If I speak louder I might break in two.

I want to collapse into a pile of broken memories and forgotten smiles, but there's a hissing sound in my ears and I wonder if it's my will draining out of me.

Thankfully, Dad's voice reaches me.

"I have something for you."

I watch him pull some folded up papers from his back pocket. One is a map of Los Angeles. I see the words 'Orange County' on another. He holds them out like he's Prometheus offering Mankind a bundle of burning sticks.

"Thanks, Dad." I shake my head. "Not sure why, but I don't need them."

I expect him to argue with me, but he doesn't.

Neither of us seems to want to make a big deal out of saying goodbye. Just a quick, awkward hug and I pull away from the embrace. But Dad drags me back. Clings desperately to me. Shaking like he's the child and I'm the parent; his breath hot on my neck when he whispers in my ear.

"Tell your mother I love her, kiddo."

I can only nod and step back. This time, he lets me go.

I look over my shoulder only once. Dad's already fading. A dark smudge on a murky platform. A lonely outline beneath a sun forever stuck on 6:47 PST.

Frozen skies. Abandoned cars on the freeways. Scarecrow trees dying from lack of rainwater. Uninhabited houses with empty windows. Vacant parks and abandoned schoolyards. Strange monuments from a dead, ancient world. This is the scenery as I run the tracks south.

Days pass. Maybe years. Or decades. I'm not hungry. Not thirsty or tired. I don't take breaks to pee behind dead bushes or under leafless trees. I don't stop to wonder why there's no bodily functions to attend to. I just walk the tracks south. I'm a homing pigeon on autopilot. I know exactly where I'm going even if the journey's on rinse and repeat.

Until it isn't.

I can only describe the change as the world suddenly starting to melt in slow-motion. Solids turn to gel as everything dissolves into wet, golden, buttery blobs under a disintegrating sky. Everything but the train tracks.

The Big Sleep is wounded. It's softening as everything is turning into butter.

I should be afraid. I want to feel afraid. But instead, reality dissolving is just one more irony. It gives me a sense of satisfaction. It's a stab in the heart of The Big Sleep and I'm Dad's knife. I may melt away but I'm taking monster with me.

Something down the tracks flashes. I squint and make out a green shape rising from the buttery gold fuzziness surrounding the rails.

I don't want to see it. I want to fade away, let The BS make a permanent memory of me. But then the shape on the tracks solidifies.

It's a car.

Twin headlight beams at the front end punch through the butter. Red lights are waxy, smoldering cherries at the rear.

Dad's old 1972 Ford Galaxie 500 Station Wagon. And it's here.

Somewhere.

Nowhere.

For a split second I'm thirteen again. I'm in the backseat drawing Totoro in my sketch pad. Mom's back at home and Dad and I are on our annual Daddy/Daughter trip to San Clemente. The clock on the dashboard leers at me.

6:47!

I relive the horror as fierce, white-hot eyes smash through the side windows of Dad's old clunker.

An elephantine horn trumpets at Dad, 'Get off the tracks!" The shrill ding-dinging of the crossing sign, the last sound I remember.

Then total darkness follows; a slow, rhythmic hisses underneath it.

I feel pressure. Bone wrenching pressure pushes down on me from every direction. I scream silently and the hissing abruptly stops.

Curious, I stop screaming. Somehow the hissing's absence leaves a hole in me.

"Why is that happening?"

A voice. A woman is speaking. Soft, gentle. Familiar. Full of grace. Filled up with tears.

"I- I don't know."

A second woman. Professional. Perplexed.

"I'll call the doctor," she says.

The voices grow louder, stronger. Right next to me.

"This isn't right. The ventilator. I turned it-"

"What are you saying?" The familiar voice is frantic. She's shouting.

Without warning, bells explode all around me. I moan as the pain rushes back.

"Do something!" The woman is beside herself. Wailing. "Help her!"

Mom?

There's a rustle of fabric, then a sharp jab in my arm. The pressure lifts and I'm spirited away from the pain.

When I wake the second time, the hospital room is dark. Someone's closed the shades; the lights are down.

Mom is slumped sideways in a chair next to my bed, knees drawn up under her arms, eyes closed, lips slightly parted. Her breathing is deep, exhausted. She looks like she hasn't combed her hair in weeks.

She's absolutely beautiful.

I raise my head, feel a wave of pain suggesting I reconsider. I settle back and watch Mom breath in the dark.

With time to think, I wonder what day it is. I don't wonder where Dad is.

I already know.

There's a clock on the wall not far from the TV. Some animal show is on, though the sound is off. The clock smiles down from its perch.

1:26.

Afternoon? Morning? Either is fine. As long as it isn't 6:47.

Through blurred eyes I find a whiteboard near the window, date printed in precise blue marker letters.

September 4th, 2018.

Exactly two-and-a-half years since my very last Daddy/Daughter trip to San Clemente.

"Casey?"

Mom's voice is tired and slurred, but awake. She's at my side leaning towards me, her chin on her hands; fingers curled under like a praying mantis, eyes bright, gray, and wide.

"Hi, Mom," I croak.

"Oh, Casey!"

Mom reaches out and gently rests her fingers on my arm. She's sobbing, repeating my name over and as a tiger silently chases an antelope on the TV.

There's long months filled with smiles and tears and pain pills. Loads of therapy. It takes some time but I learn to walk again.

When I force Mom to take me to Rose Hills one late afternoon, we share teary eyed memories of Dad at his graveside. We don't talk about the fact that I shouldn't be alive, DNRs, or lights at the end of a tunnel.

We just lay in silence on a blanket in the cool, freshly mown grass amidst a maze of gray headstones. A wispy layer of smog hangs in the late afternoon sky; it lends it a reddish glow. Cars whoosh by on the freeway below, almost drowning out the chittering of birds. Voices of mourners nearby carry on the wind and I recall the silence of the Big Sleep.

"Do you remember it?" Mom asks. "The accident I mean."

"Very little," I whisper.

I want to tell her about Union Station. About everything that happened (or didn't happen) there. How hard Dad worked to get me back home. But I don't say anything about any of it.

Instead, I give her Dad's message and Mom pretends I don't sound crazy.

I glance down at the brand new smart watch Mom gave me for my sixteenth birthday last week, but it's dead.

I must've forgotten to charge it.

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6:47 PST - A Teens & Young Adult Short Story by David Pampu - Reedsy Prompts

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This story fits young adults because it talks about real and intense feelings that many teens go through. It deals with tough issues like school shootings and feeling guilty for surviving, which are important for teens to understand and talk about. The story uses simple language to show how hard it can be to handle big emotions and find meaning after bad things happen.

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Tigger Warning:

Suicide, Violence, Swearing

"It's like flying."

She said as I peered down at the two dead bodies laying on the ground below me. I was one of the four who decided to jump instead. The unlucky four who didn't escape.

"Well?"
Well what? You're asking me to jump off a fucking building.
"Together?" I ask

"No, you go first."
What does that mean? Is she really going to chicken out? She was the one who so readily agreed to the idea.
"What?"

"You go first."

"No."

"Why?"

" What do you mean why?" I can feel the anger inside of me boiling up to the lid like rice does when you forget about it. She so willingly wanted to jump when I didn't; now she refuses. " You want me to jump off a building. You want me to end my own life." I can now feel tears pooling in my eyes as I realize what the last sentence meant.

"Just plea-"

"NO!" I scream. Finally losing my cool. "YOU PIECE OF SHIT! I DON'T WANT TO JUMP FIRST! FOR FUCK SAKE I DON'T WANT TO JUMP AT ALL!"

At this point, I'm sobbing. A full fit like a two-year-old. I crumble to the ground and hide my face in my hands. Gunshots ring under me in the building on which I sit. I now realize we were not the only "unlucky four" who didn't escape. That's why we came up here in the first place. To die peacefully. Or as peacefully as we could. I sit on the concrete bawling until my head is throbbing with pain.

I realize Kelsie, the poor girl I just screamed at doesn't feel any different than I do. My conscience punishes me by bombarding my mind with scoldings from all different corners of my head. She didn't deserve that. We're all losing our shit. Don't blame her. You're so selfish. What is wrong with you? You deserve to be laying down there with the others.

I pull myself together enough to stand up and apologize.

"I'm sorry. I truly am, you didn't deserve that," I say while wiping the tears and snot onto my navy blue sleeve. I finally turn my head up to look her in the eye, but I am met with nothing but with a blue sky filled with clouds. Kelsie's not there. Through my tantrum, I didn't hear the clap of her body hitting the blacktop parking lot that lay three stories below me.

She was dead.

I was the only one left.

My head is spinning. My legs feel numb like they do after getting off a roller coaster. Finally, after standing in the same spot for what feels like an eternity, my mind switches to what you could call flight mode. I sprint over to the giant vent and rip the grate off. I squeeze in the best I can and replace the grate, completely unconscious of what I'm doing.

Tears are streaming down my face as I pull myself further and further back into the whirring metal box. The sound of gunshots echo in my ears. That moment from no longer than forty-five minutes ago plays on repeat in my head. Kids scurrying through the hallways with looks of terror on their faces. The moment when we all realized this was it. This was the end of our lives. Everything ended in the hallways of a shitty high school.

Not me.

I survived.

○ ○ ○

My eyes flutter open. I fell asleep. I take a breath, letting the cool air of a Michigan night fill my lungs. I can hear the chatter of people not far off.

I take the vent cover off and wiggle my way out, my entire body cracking as I sit up on the cold concrete. I sit there for who knows how long listening to the chattering people. They're talking about something terrible.

"...42 were killed."
"...4 are missing." "They're all dead..."
I stand up and walk over to the edge of the roof where I can hear the people and look down. The people go quiet and look back at me. Suddenly the group breaks apart, some heading towards their red and blue flashing cars, while others rush into the school.

About thirty seconds later I hear, Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump. People running up a staircase. Then the door to the roof bursts open.

"HEY! KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!" A man yells, I assume at me, however, I don't move at all. I can't, I'm too exhausted. Three other men follow him through the door and start to surround me with their guns pointed at the ground. I look up at them and they relax, seeing I have nothing but my ripped zip-up hoodie. Two of the men put their guns in their holsters and start to move in closer.

No. No. No. No. No. NO! Unintentionally, I jump back away from the men, pulling my sweatshirt tight around my waist.

"It's alright. We're here to help." says the man who first came barreling through the door. I quickly take another step back, not letting him get any closer.

"I promise you we are here to help." says the man again. He extends his hand towards me so I can take it. I look at it and my lungs start to feel like they're shrinking. They feel so small I can barely breathe. I sit down gasping for air when suddenly my hand is in someone else's.

"Hey, hey, hey, deep breaths. Deep breaths. Ready? Watch me." I don't look up, instead, I stare at a tiny piece of rock embedded in the concrete. He starts taking exaggerated breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth, just like every yoga instructor I've ever met. The sound of my heart in my ears is fading; my breathing is slowing down. All the men have left, leaving just the first man and me.

"Better?" Says the man. I nod, still refusing to look at him.

"Can I ask what your name is?" I take a deep breath and answer him, trying my best not to let my voice crack.

"Piper," I say quietly.

"Hi Piper, I'm Ceader, how old are you?"

"Fifteen,"

"What grade are you in?"

"Tenth."

"Tenth grade, very good. Piper, are you hurt anywhere?"

"I think I hurt my ankle." I hadn't even noticed. As we continue to talk, my confidence builds little by little.

"Are you able to walk?"

"I think so."

"Great, if you can, I would like to ask you to come down to the parking lot with me. We want to ask you some questions."

"Who's we?"

"The police. Your school was attacked today and we're trying to figure out why it happened.
Ask me why it happened. Jesus Christ. What the hell is wrong with these people? What happened was another high school in America got screwed over again.
"...But first, do you have a family? Mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, anyone who you feel comfortable contacting?"

"No."

"No one?"

"No."
I wonder where mom is right now. If she would have given a shit if her only kid died. You idiot. Of course she wouldn't have. She left me. Left me to figure out my life on my own. A fifteen-year-old to fend for herself.
"Okay then, you're gonna stick with us until we can figure something out for you."

"Alright."

"Alright." Says Ceader, leading the way to the rooftop's door.

Instead of following, I stand in one place with my feet glued to the ground.
Why didn't I die? Why did I survive? The person who has nothing to live for is living. So many people died. People with a life. People who had someone who cared about them. I robbed them of that. I don't deserve to live.
I burst into tears.

Ceader turns back around. I look at him and he seems to know what I'm thinking. He starts running toward me but is too slow. I reach the edge of the building and turn around. He stops and looks me dead in the eye.

"Piper. Stop. Please Piper don't do anything."

He speaks to his chest, requesting backup but it won't help him.

"Look away. Please" I ask, for his sake.

He lunges at me but it's too late. I fall back.

I always did want to fly.

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Fini Flight - A American Short Story by Camphor White - Reedsy Prompts

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Geek Girl (TV Series 2024– ) ⭐ 6.6 | Comedy, Drama

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"Harry Potter" is suitable for young adults because it features a young protagonist, Harry, who faces challenges and grows up, just like many teens. The story blends fantasy and real-life issues, like friendship and identity, which resonate with young readers. The books are written in an engaging and accessible way, making them enjoyable and easy to read.

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Orphan Harry learns he is a wizard on his 11th birthday when Hagrid escorts him to magic-teaching Hogwarts School. As a baby, his mother’s love protected…

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Novel in verse

• ‘Inside Out and Back Again’ by Thanhha Lai

About Hà, a 10 year old Vietnamese girl who moves to Alabama escaping the Vietnam War in 1975 after the fall of Saigon and struggles to find her place.

Discusses issues such as self-identity, family, tragedy/violence, coming-of-age, etc.

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Chronicle

Supernatural/Friendship

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For the film by Sebastián Cordero known as “Chronicles”, see Crónicas.

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3. Poem - Swan and Shadow by John Hollander

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3. Poem - Swan and Shadow by John Hollander

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Concrete poem

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Novel in verse

•’The Poet X’ by Elizabeth Acevedo

About a high school girl who is confused about her feelings on boys, her body, her relationships, and religion.

•Explores on identity - X’s struggle to find her voice and identity

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E. L. Shen’s The Comeback is a heartfelt middle-grade debut about a young Chinese American girl trying to be a champ - in figure skating and in life.Twelve-year-old Maxine Chen is just trying to nail that perfect landing: on the ice, in middle school, and at home, where her parents worry that competitive skating is too much pressure for a budding tween. Maxine isn’t concerned, however - she’s determined to glide t…

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The Edge of Seventeen (2016) ⭐ 7.3 | Comedy, Drama

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So, I'm sure I've read this book before (especially once I started actually reading the book - it's all familiar and I've either read it before or had a scarily accurate dream about the story). But because I can't find any review of the book on this blog or on Goodreads, the completionist in me decided to reread the book and write a proper review. Without further ado...

The Girl Who Drank The Moon is a charming and heartwarming tale about family, growing up, and magic. Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering for the Witch. What the elders know, however, is that there's no witch, they made her up to keep the people compliant. What the elders don't know, however, is that there IS a witch (Xan) and she's been rescuing the babies and giving them to loving families in the Free Cities. One year, while bringing another baby to the Free Cities, Xan accidentally feeds the baby moonlight and enmagick's her. This begins Luna's story of her life with Xan.

The most magical thing about this story is probably its characters. Luna grows up with Xan (witch) Glerk (swamp monster) and Fyrian (Simply Enormous Dragon who's currently a Perfectly Tiny Dragon). The three are quirky but loving and Luna grows up very well cared for. I really adored reading their interactions with one another and it was easy to feel the love they had for Luna. In the Protectorate, we follow the story of Antain, the nephew of the Grand Elder who isn't quite fit for such a callous role. His story is smaller than Luna's but no less important.

In terms of story, what starts as a simple story about Luna's magic threatening to overflow quickly turns into something much more complex. We learn about Xan and the Protectorate's history and all the different plot strands come together at the end for a very exciting finale. My "gift edition" of the book that I borrowed from the library also comes with a story about Xan's childhood, which was lovely since it colours in even more detail.

If I had any complaints, it would be that the pacing of the book was quite uneven. The first half was rather slow and gentle while the last section was a wild ride. But still, we do follow Luna over quite a long period of time and I was charmed from the start so I didn't really mind the uneven pacing.

Overall, this is a great Middle Great fantasy. It's filled with so much love and magic, as well as quirky adorable characters, that it was difficult to put this down once I started. I definitely recommend this to fans of fantasy.
Featured Image: Photo from Canva

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Book Review: The Girl Who Drank The Moon by Kelly Barnhill - Eustea Reads

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So, I'm sure I've read this book before (especially once I started actually reading the book - it's all familiar and I've either read it before or had a scarily accurate dream about the story). But because I can't find any review of the book on this blog or on Goodreads, the completionist in me...

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identity crisis and self-worth

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Book Summary

Boys don't keep diaries—or do they?

The launch of an exciting and innovatively illustrated new series narrated by an unforgettable kid every family can relate to

It's a new school year, and Greg Heffley finds himself thrust into middle school, where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. The hazards of growing up before you're ready are uniquely revealed through words and drawings as Greg records them in his diary.

In book one of this debut series, Greg is happy to have Rowley, his sidekick, along for the ride. But when Rowley's star starts to rise, Greg tries to use his best friend's newfound popularity to his own advantage, kicking off a chain of events that will test their friendship in hilarious fashion.

Author/illustrator Jeff Kinney recalls the growing pains of school life and introduces a new kind of hero who epitomizes the challenges of being a kid. As Greg says in his diary, "Just don't expect me to be all 'Dear Diary' this and 'Dear Diary' that." Luckily for us, what Greg Heffley says he won't do and what he actually does are two very different things.

Since its launch in May 2004 on Funbrain.com, the Web version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid has been viewed by 20 million unique online readers. This year, it is averaging 70,000 readers a day.

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Summary and reviews of Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Book summary and reviews of Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

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H

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you've got a friend in me - Randy Newman

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you've got a friend in me - Randy Newman

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You've got a friend in me by Randy Newman lyrics

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Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds.

Jun 29, 2017 · The game has changed, but the legend continues. Watch the official trailer for #JUMANJI ...
Duration: 2:46
Posted: Jun 29, 2017

Jul 1, 2019 · Everything you know about Jumanji is about to change. Watch the trailer for #JUMANJI​: The ...
Duration: 2:58
Posted: Jul 1, 2019

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Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds. Jun 29, 2017 · The game has changed, but the legend continues. Watch the official trailer for #JUMANJI ...Duration: 2:46 Posted: Jun 29, 2017 Jul 1, 2019 · Everything you know about Jumanji is about to change.

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https://youtu.be/2SmmxvHLsKk?feature=shared

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Free verse poem

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You Belong With Me - Taylor Swift (Lyrics) 🎵

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SHORT STORY- Dysfunctional Family/ Identity crisis

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SHORT STORY- Dysfunctional Family/ Identity crisis

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Eleven-year-old Isabella's blended family is more divided than ever in this "timely but genuine" (Publishers Weekly) story about divorce and racial identity from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Out of My Mind, Sharon M. Draper.

Eleven-year-old Isabella's parents are divorced, so she has to switch lives every week: One week she's Isabella with her dad, his girlfriend Anastasia, and her son Darren living in a fancy house where they are one of the only black families in the neighborhood. The next week she's Izzy with her mom and her boyfriend John-Mark in a small, not-so-fancy house that she loves.

Because of this, Isabella has always felt pulled between two worlds. And now that her parents are divorced, it seems their fights are even worse, and they're always about HER. Isabella feels completely stuck in the middle, split and divided between them more than ever. And she is beginning to realize that being split between Mom and Dad involves more than switching houses, switching nicknames, switching backpacks: it's also about switching identities. Her dad is black, her mom is white, and strangers are always commenting: "You're so exotic!" "You look so unusual." "But what are you really?" She knows what they're really saying: "You don't look like your parents." "You're different." "What race are you really?" And when her parents, who both get engaged at the same time, get in their biggest fight ever, Isabella doesn't just feel divided, she feels ripped in two. What does it mean to be half white or half black? To belong to half mom and half dad? And if you're only seen as half of this and half of that, how can you ever feel whole?

It seems like nothing can bring Isabella's family together again - until the worst thing happens. Isabella and Darren are stopped by the police. A cell phone is mistaken for a gun. And shots are fired.

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Eleven-year-old Isabella's blended family is more divided than ever in this "timely but genuine" (Publishers Weekly) story about divorce and racial identity from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Out of My Mind, Sharon M.

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Complication by Misti L.Green

In a world filled with changes

each and every day,

I feel I'm being judged

for what I do and say.

I remember back to Barbies

and play days at the park,

When I didn't worry about

other people's remarks.

Now looking in the mirror,

I see, to my surprise,

A completely different person

staring in my eyes.

The carefree little girl

I saw at 4 and 5

Is now becoming a teen

Just trying to survive.

Misti L. Green. "Complication." Family Friend Poems, December 1, 2007. https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/changing-life

Life is worth a try by E.Rob Turner

Along this huge labyrinth

That we call life,

You will face great trials,

Adversity, and strife.

Now pay attention,

Because life is tough.

I have a few words

To help you face bad stuff.

My message is that

When the going is rough,

There is still a lot of hope,

Even though life is tough.

Follow your heart!

Stay safe and secure,

Because darkness can strike

When you are unsure.

Although the world's dark,

There's still much light!

Even though it may seem

As though life's a huge fight.

Amid all the trials,

Life really is neat.

You are here to learn,

Which is quite a treat!

You will go through hard times,

As everyone should,

Because without all the bad,

How can we know good?

If our lives were easy,

If we couldn't fall,

And without all the trials,

Will we learn at all?

The answer is no.

The trials are there

To help us grow stronger

And to help us prepare

For what glory we'll gain

After we die.

Though the trials are hard,

Life is worth a try!

E. Rob Turner. "Life Is Worth A Try." Family Friend Poems, September 2, 2016. https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/life-is-worth-a-try

Hope is a mystery by Vanessa

I don't know why

why this world's so cruel

it's so abusing

We all have seen Earth's glorious mysteries

The beautiful oceans and mountains that'll make you cry

why must we abuse this land

How can we reconcile

It's hurtful and shameful

we hurt those we love

Betrayal and fear surround us

I don't know why

we all have to malign

we're all human

we all feel pain

so why do we hurt one another

and make each other cry

to me it's an air of mystery

But I have hope

That someone will speak up

and help us be one

years from now you can ask me the same question

how could something so beautiful end in flames

I would tell you as I have told others before

I don't know

all I can do is hope

so for now I do as I have told you

and mark it with a star

for every star

there is a hope

of every man, women, and child

hoping for a new day

that those billions of stars out there

are for us to grab hold

to not let go

to not lose hope

they can call them balls of fire

I don't know

all I know in the end

is that we're all human

We all feel pain

and I'm grabbing that star

and never letting go

Vanessa. "Hope Is A Mystery." Family Friend Poems, July 11, 2012. https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/hope-is-a-mystery

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self acceptance

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Alessia Cara - Scars To Your Beautiful (Lyrics)

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Zootopia - Try Everything (Lyrics, Shakira)

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"To Kill a Mockingbird" is suitable for young adults because it deals with important themes like racism, morality, and empathy, which are relevant to teenagers' understanding of the world. The story is told through the eyes of Scout, a young girl, making it relatable for young readers as they see her grow and learn. The book encourages critical thinking and discussions about justice and human behavior, helping young adults develop a deeper understanding of social issues.

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To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by the American author Harper Lee. It was published in 1960 and was instantly successful. In the United States, it is widely read in high schools and middle schools. To Kill a Mockingbird has become a classic of modern American literature; a year after its release, it won the Pulitzer Prize. The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was ten.

Despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality, the novel is renowned for its warmth and humor. Atticus Finch, the narrator's father, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. The historian Joseph Crespino explains, "In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its main character, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism." As a Southern Gothic novel and Bildungsroman, the primary themes of To Kill a Mockingbird involve racial injustice and the destruction of innocence. Scholars have noted that Lee also addresses issues of class, courage, compassion, and gender roles in the Deep South. Lessons from the book emphasize tolerance and decry prejudice. Despite its themes, To Kill a Mockingbird has been subject to campaigns for removal from public classrooms, often challenged for its use of racial epithets. In 2006, British librarians ranked the book ahead of the Bible as one "every adult should read before they die".

Reaction to the novel varied widely upon publication. Despite the number of copies sold and its widespread use in education, literary analysis of it is sparse. Author Mary McDonough Murphy, who collected individual impressions of To Kill a Mockingbird by several authors and public figures, calls the book "an astonishing phenomenon". It was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 1962 by director Robert Mulligan, with a screenplay by Horton Foote. Since 1990, a play based on the novel has been performed annually in Harper Lee's hometown.

To Kill a Mockingbird was Lee's only published book until Go Set a Watchman, an earlier draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, was published on July 14, 2015. Lee continued to respond to her work's impact until her death in February 2016, although she had refused any personal publicity for herself or the novel since 1964.

Biographical background and publication

Born in 1926, Harper Lee grew up in the Southern town of Monroeville, Alabama, where she became close friends with soon-to-be-famous writer Truman Capote. She attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944-45), and then studied law at the University of Alabama (1945-49). While attending college, she wrote for campus literary magazines: Huntress at Huntingdon and the humor magazine Rammer Jammer at the University of Alabama. At both colleges, she wrote short stories and other works about racial injustice, a rarely mentioned topic on such campuses at the time. In 1950, Lee moved to New York City, where she worked as a reservation clerk for British Overseas Airways Corporation; there, she began writing a collection of essays and short stories about people in Monroeville. Hoping to be published, Lee presented her writing in 1957 to a literary agent recommended by Capote. An editor at J. B. Lippincott, who bought the manuscript, advised her to quit the airline and concentrate on writing.

Donations from friends allowed her to write uninterrupted for a year. After finishing the first draft and returning it to Lippincott, the manuscript, at that point titled "Go Set a Watchman", fell into the hands of Therese von Hohoff Torrey, known professionally as Tay Hohoff. Hohoff was impressed, "[T]he spark of the true writer flashed in every line," she would later recount in a corporate history of Lippincott, but as Hohoff saw it, the manuscript was by no means fit for publication. It was, as she described it, "more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel." During the following two and a half years, she led Lee from one draft to the next until the book finally achieved its finished form.

After the "Watchman" title was rejected, it was re-titled Atticus but Lee renamed it To Kill a Mockingbird to reflect that the story went beyond a character portrait. The book was published on July 11, 1960. The editorial team at Lippincott warned Lee that she would probably sell only several thousand copies. In 1964, Lee recalled her hopes for the book when she said,

I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird.' ... I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers but, at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected.

Instead of a "quick and merciful death", Reader's Digest Condensed Books chose the book for reprinting in part, which gave it a wide readership immediately. Since the original publication, the book has never been out of print.

Plot summary

The story, told by Jean Louise Finch, takes place during three years (1933-35) of the Great Depression in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, the seat of Maycomb County. Nicknamed Scout, the narrator, who is six years old at the beginning of the book, lives with her older brother Jeremy, nicknamed Jem, and their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. They also have a black cook, Calpurnia, who has been with the family for many years and helps Atticus raise the two children.

Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill, who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt each summer. The three children are terrified, yet fascinated, by their neighbor, the reclusive Arthur "Boo" Radley. The adults of Maycomb are hesitant to talk about Boo, and many of them have not seen him for many years. The children feed one another's imagination with rumors about his appearance and reasons for remaining hidden, and they fantasize about how to get him out of his house. After two summers of friendship with Dill, Scout and Jem find that someone is leaving them small gifts in a tree outside the Radley place. Several times the mysterious Boo makes gestures of affection to the children, but, to their disappointment, he never appears in person.

Judge Taylor appoints Atticus to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Although many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom to the best of his ability. Other children taunt Jem and Scout for Atticus's actions, calling him a " nigger-lover". Scout is tempted to stand up for her father's honor by fighting, even though he has told her not to. One night, Atticus faces a group of men intent on lynching Tom. Scout, Jem, and Dill unexpectedly show up, and Scout inadvertently breaks the mob mentality by recognizing and talking to a classmate's father, causing the would-be lynchers to disperse.

Atticus does not want Jem and Scout to be present at Tom Robinson's trial. No seat is available on the main floor, but the Rev. Sykes, the pastor of Calpurnia's church, invites Jem, Scout and Dill to watch from the colored balcony. Atticus establishes that Mayella Ewell and her father, Bob, are lying. It is revealed that Mayella made sexual advances toward Tom, resulting in her being beaten by her father. The townspeople refer to the Ewells as " white trash" who are not to be trusted, but the jury convicts Tom regardless. Jem's faith in justice is badly shaken. Atticus is hopeful that he can get the verdict overturned, but Tom is shot and killed while trying to escape from prison.

Despite Tom's conviction, Bob Ewell is humiliated by the events of the trial. Atticus explains that he destroyed Ewell's last shred of credibility. Ewell vows revenge, spitting in Atticus' face, trying to break into the judge's house and menacing Tom Robinson's widow. Finally, he attacks Jem and Scout while they are walking home on a dark night after the school Halloween pageant. Jem suffers a broken arm and is knocked unconscious in the struggle, but amid the confusion, someone comes to the children's rescue. The mysterious man carries Jem home, where Scout realizes that he is Boo Radley.

Sheriff Tate arrives and discovers Ewell dead from a knife wound. Atticus believes that Jem was responsible, but Tate is certain it was Boo. The sheriff tells Atticus that, to protect Boo's privacy, he will report that Ewell simply fell on his own knife during the attack. Boo asks Scout to walk him home. After she says goodbye to him at his front door, he disappears, never to be seen again by Scout. While standing on the Radley porch, Scout imagines life from Boo's perspective.

Autobiographical elements

Lee said that To Kill a Mockingbird is not an autobiography, but rather an example of how an author "should write about what he knows and write truthfully". Nevertheless, several people and events from Lee's childhood parallel those of the fictional Scout. Amasa Coleman Lee, Lee's father, was an attorney similar to Atticus Finch. In 1919, he defended two black men accused of murder. After they were convicted, hanged and mutilated, he never took another criminal case. Lee's father was also the editor and publisher of the Monroeville newspaper. Although more of a proponent of racial segregation than Atticus, he gradually became more liberal in his later years. Though Scout's mother died when she was a baby, Lee was 25 when her mother, Frances Cunningham Finch, died. Lee's mother was prone to a nervous condition that rendered her mentally and emotionally absent. Lee's older brother Edwin was the inspiration for Jem.

Lee modeled the character of Dill on Truman Capote, her childhood friend known then as Truman Persons. Just as Dill lived next door to Scout during the summer, Capote lived next door to Lee with his aunts while his mother visited New York City. Like Dill, Capote had an impressive imagination and a gift for fascinating stories. Both Lee and Capote loved to read, and were atypical children in some ways: Lee was a scrappy tomboy who was quick to fight, and Capote was ridiculed for his advanced vocabulary and lisp. She and Capote made up and acted out stories they wrote on an old Underwood typewriter that Lee's father gave them. They became good friends when both felt alienated from their peers; Capote called the two of them "apart people". In 1960, Capote and Lee traveled to Kansas together to investigate the multiple murders that were the basis for Capote's nonfiction novel In Cold Blood.

Down the street from the Lees lived a family whose house was always boarded up; they served as the models for the fictional Radleys. The son of the family got into some legal trouble and the father kept him at home for 24 years out of shame. He was hidden until virtually forgotten; he died in 1952.

The origin of Tom Robinson is less clear, although many have speculated that his character was inspired by several models. When Lee was 10 years old, a white woman near Monroeville accused a black man named Walter Lett of raping her. The story and the trial were covered by her father's newspaper, which reported that Lett was convicted and sentenced to death. After a series of letters appeared claiming Lett had been falsely accused, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He died there of tuberculosis in 1937. Scholars believe that Robinson's difficulties reflect the notorious case of the Scottsboro Boys, in which nine black men were convicted of raping two white women on negligible evidence. However, in 2005, Lee stated that she had in mind something less sensational, although the Scottsboro case served "the same purpose" to display Southern prejudices. Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955, and whose death is credited as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement, is also considered a model for Tom.

The narrative is very tough, because [Lee] has to both be a kid on the street and aware of the mad dogs and the spooky houses and have this beautiful vision of how justice works and all the creaking mechanisms of the courthouse. Part of the beauty is that she... trusts the visual to lead her, and the sensory.

The strongest element of style noted by critics and reviewers is Lee's talent for narration, which in an early review in was called "tactile brilliance". Writing a decade later, another scholar noted, "Harper Lee has a remarkable gift of story-telling. Her art is visual, and with cinematographic fluidity and subtlety we see a scene melting into another scene without jolts of transition." Lee combines the narrator's voice of a child observing her surroundings with a grown woman's reflecting on her childhood, using the ambiguity of this voice combined with the narrative technique of flashback to play intricately with perspectives. This narrative method allows Lee to tell a "delightfully deceptive" story that mixes the simplicity of childhood observation with adult situations complicated by hidden motivations and unquestioned tradition. However, at times the blending causes reviewers to question Scout's preternatural vocabulary and depth of understanding. Both Harding LeMay and the novelist and literary critic Granville Hicks expressed doubt that children, as sheltered as Scout and Jem, could understand the complexities and horrors involved in the trial for Tom Robinson's life.

Writing about Lee's style and use of humor in a tragic story, scholar Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin states: "Laughter ... [exposes] the gangrene under the beautiful surface but also by demeaning it; one can hardly ... be controlled by what one is able to laugh at." Scout's precocious observations about her neighbors and behavior inspired National Endowment of the Arts director David Kipen to call her "hysterically funny". To address complex issues, however, Tavernier-Courbin notes that Lee uses parody, satire, and irony effectively by using a child's perspective. After Dill promises to marry her, then spends too much time with Jem, Scout reasons the best way to get him to pay attention to her is to beat him up, which she does several times. Scout's first day in school is a satirical treatment of education; her teacher says she must undo the damage Atticus has wrought in teaching her to read and write, and forbids Atticus from teaching her further. Lee treats the most unfunny situations with irony, however, as Jem and Scout try to understand how Maycomb embraces racism and still tries sincerely to remain a decent society. Satire and irony are used to such an extent that Tavernier-Courbin suggests one interpretation for the book's title: Lee is doing the mocking-of education, the justice system, and her own society-by using them as subjects of her humorous disapproval.

Critics also note the entertaining methods used to drive the plot. When Atticus is out of town, Jem locks a Sunday school classmate in the church basement with the furnace during a game of Shadrach. This prompts their black housekeeper Calpurnia to escort Scout and Jem to her church, which allows the children a glimpse into her personal life, as well as Tom Robinson's. Scout falls asleep during the Halloween pageant and makes a tardy entrance onstage, causing the audience to laugh uproariously. She is so distracted and embarrassed that she prefers to go home in her ham costume, which saves her life.

Scholars have characterized To Kill a Mockingbird as both a Southern Gothic and a Bildungsroman. The grotesque and near-supernatural qualities of Boo Radley and his house, and the element of racial injustice involving Tom Robinson, contribute to the aura of the Gothic in the novel. Lee used the term "Gothic" to describe the architecture of Maycomb's courthouse and in regard to Dill's exaggeratedly morbid performances as Boo Radley. Outsiders are also an important element of Southern Gothic texts and Scout and Jem's questions about the hierarchy in the town cause scholars to compare the novel to Catcher in the Rye and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Despite challenging the town's systems, Scout reveres Atticus as an authority above all others, because he believes that following one's conscience is the highest priority, even when the result is social ostracism. However, scholars debate about the Southern Gothic classification, noting that Boo Radley is, in fact, human, protective, and benevolent. Furthermore, in addressing themes such as alcoholism, incest, rape, and racial violence, Lee wrote about her small town realistically rather than melodramatically. She portrays the problems of individual characters as universal underlying issues in every society.

As children coming of age, Scout and Jem face hard realities and learn from them. Lee seems to examine Jem's sense of loss about how his neighbors have disappointed him more than Scout's. Jem says to their neighbor Miss Maudie the day after the trial, "It's like bein' a caterpillar wrapped in a cocoon ... I always thought Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that's what they seemed like". This leads him to struggle with understanding the separations of race and class. Just as the novel is an illustration of the changes Jem faces, it is also an exploration of the realities Scout must face as an atypical girl on the verge of womanhood. As one scholar writes, " To Kill a Mockingbird can be read as a feminist Bildungsroman, for Scout emerges from her childhood experiences with a clear sense of her place in her community and an awareness of her potential power as the woman she will one day be."

Despite the novel's immense popularity upon publication, it has not received the close critical attention paid to other modern American classics. Don Noble, the editor of a book of essays about the novel, estimates that the ratio of sales to analytical essays may be a million to one. Christopher Metress writes that the book is "an icon whose emotive sway remains strangely powerful because it also remains unexamined". Noble suggests it does not receive academic attention because of its consistent status as a best-seller ("If that many people like it, it can't be any good.") and that general readers seem to feel they do not require analytical interpretation.

Harper Lee had remained famously detached from interpreting the novel since the mid-1960s. However, she gave some insight into her themes when, in a rare letter to the editor, she wrote in response to the passionate reaction her book caused:

Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners.

Southern life and racial injustice

In the 33 years since its publication, [ To Kill a Mockingbird] has never been the focus of a dissertation, and it has been the subject of only six literary studies, several of them no more than a couple of pages long.

-Claudia Johnson in To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries, 1994

When the book was released, reviewers noted that it was divided into two parts, and opinion was mixed about Lee's ability to connect them. The first part of the novel concerns the children's fascination with Boo Radley and their feelings of safety and comfort in the neighborhood. Reviewers were generally charmed by Scout and Jem's observations of their quirky neighbors. One writer was so impressed by Lee's detailed explanations of the people of Maycomb that he categorized the book as Southern romantic regionalism. This sentimentalism can be seen in Lee's representation of the Southern caste system to explain almost every character's behavior in the novel. Scout's Aunt Alexandra attributes Maycomb's inhabitants' faults and advantages to genealogy (families that have gambling streaks and drinking streaks), and the narrator sets the action and characters amid a finely detailed background of the Finch family history and the history of Maycomb. This regionalist theme is further reflected in Mayella Ewell's apparent powerlessness to admit her advances toward Tom Robinson, and Scout's definition of "fine folks" being people with good sense who do the best they can with what they have. The South itself, with its traditions and taboos, seems to drive the plot more than the characters.

The second part of the novel deals with what book reviewer Harding LeMay termed "the spirit-corroding shame of the civilized white Southerner in the treatment of the Negro". In the years following its release, many reviewers considered To Kill a Mockingbird a novel primarily concerned with race relations. Claudia Durst Johnson considers it "reasonable to believe" that the novel was shaped by two events involving racial issues in Alabama: Rosa Parks' refusal to yield her seat on a city bus to a white person, which sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, and the 1956 riots at the University of Alabama after Autherine Lucy and Polly Myers were admitted (Myers eventually withdrew her application and Lucy was expelled, but reinstated in 1980). In writing about the historical context of the novel's construction, two other literary scholars remark: " To Kill a Mockingbird was written and published amidst the most significant and conflict-ridden social change in the South since the Civil War and Reconstruction. Inevitably, despite its mid-1930s setting, the story told from the perspective of the 1950s voices the conflicts, tensions, and fears induced by this transition."

Scholar Patrick Chura, who suggests Emmett Till was a model for Tom Robinson, enumerates the injustices endured by the fictional Tom that Till also faced. Chura notes the icon of the black rapist causing harm to the representation of the "mythologized vulnerable and sacred Southern womanhood". Any transgressions by black males that merely hinted at sexual contact with white females during the time the novel was set often resulted in a punishment of death for the accused. Tom Robinson's trial was juried by poor white farmers who convicted him despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence, as more educated and moderate white townspeople supported the jury's decision. Furthermore, the victim of racial injustice in To Kill a Mockingbird was physically impaired, which made him unable to commit the act he was accused of, but also crippled him in other ways. Roslyn Siegel includes Tom Robinson as an example of the recurring motif among white Southern writers of the black man as "stupid, pathetic, defenseless, and dependent upon the fair dealing of the whites, rather than his own intelligence to save him". Although Tom is spared from being lynched, he is killed with excessive violence during an attempted escape from prison, being shot seventeen times.

The theme of racial injustice appears symbolically in the novel as well. For example, Atticus must shoot a rabid dog, even though it is not his job to do so. Carolyn Jones argues that the dog represents prejudice within the town of Maycomb, and Atticus, who waits on a deserted street to shoot the dog, must fight against the town's racism without help from other white citizens. He is also alone when he faces a group intending to lynch Tom Robinson and once more in the courthouse during Tom's trial. Lee even uses dreamlike imagery from the mad dog incident to describe some of the courtroom scenes. Jones writes, "[t]he real mad dog in Maycomb is the racism that denies the humanity of Tom Robinson ... When Atticus makes his summation to the jury, he literally bares himself to the jury's and the town's anger."

One of the amazing things about the writing in To Kill a Mockingbird is the economy with which Harper Lee delineates not only race-white and black within a small community-but class. I mean different kinds of black people and white people both, from poor white trash to the upper crust-the whole social fabric.

In a 1964 interview, Lee remarked that her aspiration was "to be ... the Jane Austen of South Alabama." Both Austen and Lee challenged the social status quo and valued individual worth over social standing. When Scout embarrasses her poorer classmate, Walter Cunningham, at the Finch home one day, Calpurnia, their black cook, chastises and punishes her for doing so. Atticus respects Calpurnia's judgment, and later in the book even stands up to his sister, the formidable Aunt Alexandra, when she strongly suggests they fire Calpurnia. One writer notes that Scout, "in Austenian fashion", satirizes women with whom she does not wish to identify. Literary critic Jean Blackall lists the priorities shared by the two authors: "affirmation of order in society, obedience, courtesy, and respect for the individual without regard for status".

Scholars argue that Lee's approach to class and race was more complex "than ascribing racial prejudice primarily to 'poor white trash' ... Lee demonstrates how issues of gender and class intensify prejudice, silence the voices that might challenge the existing order, and greatly complicate many Americans' conception of the causes of racism and segregation." Lee's use of the middle-class narrative voice is a literary device that allows an intimacy with the reader, regardless of class or cultural background, and fosters a sense of nostalgia. Sharing Scout and Jem's perspective, the reader is allowed to engage in relationships with the conservative antebellum Mrs. Dubose; the lower-class Ewells, and the Cunninghams who are equally poor but behave in vastly different ways; the wealthy but ostracized Mr. Dolphus Raymond; and Calpurnia and other members of the black community. The children internalize Atticus' admonition not to judge someone until they have walked around in that person's skin, gaining a greater understanding of people's motives and behavior.

Courage and compassion

The novel has been noted for its poignant exploration of different forms of courage. Scout's impulsive inclination to fight students who insult Atticus reflects her attempt to stand up for him and defend him. Atticus is the moral center of the novel, however, and he teaches Jem one of the most significant lessons of courage. In a statement that both foreshadows Atticus' motivation for defending Tom Robinson and describes Mrs. Dubose, who is determined to break herself of a morphine addiction, Atticus tells Jem that courage is "when you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what".

Charles J. Shields, who wrote the first book-length biography of Harper Lee, offers the reason for the novel's enduring popularity and impact is that "its lessons of human dignity and respect for others remain fundamental and universal". Atticus' lesson to Scout that "you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view-until you climb around in his skin and walk around in it" exemplifies his compassion. She ponders the comment when listening to Mayella Ewell's testimony. When Mayella reacts with confusion to Atticus' question if she has any friends, Scout offers that she must be lonelier than Boo Radley. Having walked Boo home after he saves their lives, Scout stands on the Radley porch and considers the events of the previous three years from Boo's perspective. One writer remarks, "... [w]hile the novel concerns tragedy and injustice, heartache and loss, it also carries with it a strong sense [of] courage, compassion, and an awareness of history to be better human beings."

Gender roles

Just as Lee explores Jem's development in coming to grips with a racist and unjust society, Scout realizes what being female means, and several female characters influence her development. Scout's primary identification with her father and older brother allows her to describe the variety and depth of female characters in the novel both as one of them and as an outsider. Scout's primary female models are Calpurnia and her neighbor Miss Maudie, both of whom are strong-willed, independent, and protective. Mayella Ewell also has an influence; Scout watches her destroy an innocent man in order to hide her desire for him. The female characters who comment the most on Scout's lack of willingness to adhere to a more feminine role are also those who promote the most racist and classist points of view. For example, Mrs. Dubose chastises Scout for not wearing a dress and camisole, and indicates she is ruining the family name by not doing so, in addition to insulting Atticus' intentions to defend Tom Robinson. By balancing the masculine influences of Atticus and Jem with the feminine influences of Calpurnia and Miss Maudie, one scholar writes, "Lee gradually demonstrates that Scout is becoming a feminist in the South, for with the use of first-person narration, she indicates that Scout/Jean Louise still maintains the ambivalence about being a Southern lady she possessed as a child."

Absent mothers and abusive fathers are another theme in the novel. Scout and Jem's mother died before Scout could remember her, Mayella's mother is dead, and Mrs. Radley is silent about Boo's confinement to the house. Apart from Atticus, the fathers described are abusers. Bob Ewell, it is hinted, molested his daughter, and Mr. Radley imprisons his son in his house to the extent that Boo is remembered only as a phantom. Bob Ewell and Mr. Radley represent a form of masculinity that Atticus does not, and the novel suggests that such men, as well as the traditionally feminine hypocrites at the Missionary Society, can lead society astray. Atticus stands apart as a unique model of masculinity; as one scholar explains: "It is the job of real men who embody the traditional masculine qualities of heroic individualism, bravery, and an unshrinking knowledge of and dedication to social justice and morality, to set the society straight."

Laws, written and unwritten

Allusions to legal issues in To Kill a Mockingbird, particularly in scenes outside of the courtroom, have drawn the attention of legal scholars. Claudia Durst Johnson writes that "a greater volume of critical readings has been amassed by two legal scholars in law journals than by all the literary scholars in literary journals". The opening quote by the 19th-century essayist Charles Lamb reads: "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once." Johnson notes that even in Scout and Jem's childhood world, compromises and treaties are struck with each other by spitting on one's palm, and laws are discussed by Atticus and his children: is it right that Bob Ewell hunts and traps out of season? Many social codes are broken by people in symbolic courtrooms: Mr. Dolphus Raymond has been exiled by society for taking a black woman as his common-law wife and having interracial children; Mayella Ewell is beaten by her father in punishment for kissing Tom Robinson; by being turned into a non-person, Boo Radley receives a punishment far greater than any court could have given him. Scout repeatedly breaks codes and laws and reacts to her punishment for them. For example, she refuses to wear frilly clothes, saying that Aunt Alexandra's "fanatical" attempts to place her in them made her feel "a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on [her]". Johnson states, "[t]he novel is a study of how Jem and Scout begin to perceive the complexity of social codes and how the configuration of relationships dictated by or set off by those codes fails or nurtures the inhabitants of (their) small worlds."

Loss of innocence

Lee used the mockingbird to symbolize innocence in the novel

Songbirds and their associated symbolism appear throughout the novel. Their family name Finch is also Lee's mother's maiden name. The titular mockingbird is a key motif of this theme, which first appears when Atticus, having given his children air-rifles for Christmas, allows their Uncle Jack to teach them to shoot. Atticus warns them that, although they can "shoot all the bluejays they want", they must remember that "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird". Confused, Scout approaches her neighbor Miss Maudie, who explains that mockingbirds never harm other living creatures. She points out that mockingbirds simply provide pleasure with their songs, saying, "They don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us." Writer Edwin Bruell summarized the symbolism when he wrote in 1964, "'To kill a mockingbird' is to kill that which is innocent and harmless-like Tom Robinson." Scholars have noted that Lee often returns to the mockingbird theme when trying to make a moral point.

Tom Robinson is the chief example, among several in the novel, of innocents being carelessly or deliberately destroyed. However, scholar Christopher Metress connects the mockingbird to Boo Radley: "Instead of wanting to exploit Boo for her own fun (as she does in the beginning of the novel by putting on gothic plays about his history), Scout comes to see him as a 'mockingbird'-that is, as someone with an inner goodness that must be cherished." The last pages of the book illustrate this as Scout relates the moral of a story Atticus has been reading to her, and, in allusions to both Boo Radley and Tom Robinson, states about a character who was misunderstood, "when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things ... Atticus, he was real nice," to which he responds, "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

The novel exposes the loss of innocence so frequently that reviewer R. A. Dave claims that because every character has to face, or even suffer defeat, the book takes on elements of a classical tragedy. In exploring how each character deals with his or her own personal defeat, Lee builds a framework to judge whether the characters are heroes or fools. She guides the reader in such judgments, alternating between unabashed adoration and biting irony. Scout's experience with the Missionary Society is an ironic juxtaposition of women who mock her, gossip, and "reflect a smug, colonialist attitude toward other races" while giving the "appearance of gentility, piety, and morality". Conversely, when Atticus loses Tom's case, he is last to leave the courtroom, except for his children and the black spectators in the colored balcony, who rise silently as he walks underneath them, to honor his efforts.

Despite her editors' warnings that the book might not sell well, it quickly became a sensation, bringing acclaim to Lee in literary circles, in her hometown of Monroeville, and throughout Alabama. The book went through numerous subsequent printings and became widely available through its inclusion in the Book of the Month Club and editions released by Reader's Digest Condensed Books.

Initial reactions to the novel were varied. The New Yorker declared Lee "a skilled, unpretentious, and totally ingenuous writer", and The Atlantic Monthly's reviewer rated the book "pleasant, undemanding reading", but found the narrative voice-"a six-year-old girl with the prose style of a well-educated adult"-to be implausible. Time magazine's 1960 review of the book states that it "teaches the reader an astonishing number of useful truths about little girls and about Southern life" and calls Scout Finch "the most appealing child since Carson McCullers' Frankie got left behind at the wedding". The Chicago Sunday Tribune noted the even-handed approach to the narration of the novel's events, writing: "This is in no way a sociological novel. It underlines no cause ... To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel of strong contemporary national significance."

Not all reviewers were enthusiastic. Some lamented the use of poor white Southerners, and one-dimensional black victims, and Granville Hicks labeled the book " melodramatic and contrived". When the book was first released, Southern writer Flannery O'Connor commented, "I think for a child's book it does all right. It's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they're reading a child's book. Somebody ought to say what it is." Carson McCullers apparently agreed with the Time magazine review, writing to a cousin: "Well, honey, one thing we know is that she's been poaching on my literary preserves."

One year after its publication To Kill a Mockingbird had been translated into ten languages. In the years since, it has sold more than 30 million copies and been translated into more than 40 languages. The novel has never been out of print in hardcover or paperback, and has become part of the standard literature curriculum. A 2008 survey of secondary books read by students between grades 9-12 in the U.S. indicates the novel is the most widely read book in these grades. A 1991 survey by the Book of the Month Club and the Library of Congress Center for the Book found that To Kill a Mockingbird was fourth in a list of books that are "most often cited as making a difference". It is considered by some to be the " Great American Novel".

The 50th anniversary of the novel's release was met with celebrations and reflections on its impact. Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune praises Lee's "rich use of language" but writes that the central lesson is that "courage isn't always flashy, isn't always enough, but is always in style". Jane Sullivan in the Sydney Morning Herald agrees, stating that the book "still rouses fresh and horrified indignation" as it examines morality, a topic that has recently become unfashionable. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writing in The Guardian states that Lee, rare among American novelists, writes with "a fiercely progressive ink, in which there is nothing inevitable about racism and its very foundation is open to question", comparing her to William Faulkner, who wrote about racism as an inevitability. Literary critic Rosemary Goring in Scotland's notes the connections between Lee and Jane Austen, stating the book's central theme, that "one's moral convictions are worth fighting for, even at the risk of being reviled" is eloquently discussed.

Native Alabamian sports writer Allen Barra sharply criticized Lee and the novel in The Wall Street Journal calling Atticus a "repository of cracker-barrel epigrams" and the novel represents a "sugar-coated myth" of Alabama history. Barra writes, "It's time to stop pretending that To Kill a Mockingbird is some kind of timeless classic that ranks with the great works of American literature. Its bloodless liberal humanism is sadly dated". Thomas Mallon in The New Yorker criticizes Atticus' stiff and self-righteous demeanor, and calls Scout "a kind of highly constructed doll" whose speech and actions are improbable. Although acknowledging that the novel works, Mallon blasts Lee's "wildly unstable" narrative voice for developing a story about a content neighborhood until it begins to impart morals in the courtroom drama, following with his observation that "the book has begun to cherish its own goodness" by the time the case is over. Defending the book, Akin Ajayi writes that justice "is often complicated, but must always be founded upon the notion of equality and fairness for all." Ajayi states that the book forces readers to question issues about race, class, and society, but that it was not written to resolve them.

Many writers compare their perceptions of To Kill a Mockingbird as adults with when they first read it as children. Mary McDonagh Murphy interviewed celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Rosanne Cash, Tom Brokaw, and Harper's sister Alice Lee, who read the novel and compiled their impressions of it as children and adults into a book titled Scout, Atticus, and Boo.

The New York Times announced To Kill a Mockingbird as the best book of the past 125 years on December 28, 2021.

Atticus Finch and the legal profession

I promised myself that when I grew up and I was a man, I would try to do things just as good and noble as what Atticus had done for Tom Robinson.

One of the most significant impacts To Kill a Mockingbird has had is Atticus Finch's model of integrity for the legal profession. As scholar Alice Petry explains, "Atticus has become something of a folk hero in legal circles and is treated almost as if he were an actual person." Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center cites Atticus Finch as the reason he became a lawyer, and Richard Matsch, the federal judge who presided over the Timothy McVeigh trial, counts Atticus as a major judicial influence. One law professor at the University of Notre Dame stated that the most influential textbook he taught from was To Kill a Mockingbird, and an article in the Michigan Law Review claims, "No real-life lawyer has done more for the self-image or public perception of the legal profession," before questioning whether "Atticus Finch is a paragon of honor or an especially slick hired gun".

In 1992, an Alabama editorial called for the death of Atticus, saying that as liberal as Atticus was, he still worked within a system of institutionalized racism and sexism and should not be revered. The editorial sparked a flurry of responses from attorneys who entered the profession because of him and esteemed him as a hero. Critics of Atticus maintain he is morally ambiguous and does not use his legal skills to challenge the racist status quo in Maycomb. However, in 1997, the Alabama State Bar erected a monument to Atticus in Monroeville, marking his existence as the "first commemorative milestone in the state's judicial history". In 2008, Lee herself received an honorary special membership to the Alabama State Bar for creating Atticus who "has become the personification of the exemplary lawyer in serving the legal needs of the poor".

To Kill a Mockingbird has been a source of significant controversy since its being the subject of classroom study as early as 1963. The book's racial slurs, profanity, and frank discussion of rape have led people to challenge its appropriateness in libraries and classrooms across the United States. The American Library Association reported that To Kill a Mockingbird was number 21 of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 2000-2009. Following parental complaints about the racist language it contains, the novel was removed from classrooms in Virginia in 2016 and Biloxi, Mississippi, where it was described as making people "uncomfortable", in 2017. In the Mississippi case, the novel was removed from the required reading list but subsequently made available to interested students with parental consent. Such decisions have been criticised: the American Civil Liberties Union noted the importance of engaging with the novel's themes in places where racial injustice persists. Becky Little, of The History Channel, and representatives of the Mark Twain House noted that the value of classics lies in their power to "challenge the way we think about things" ( Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has attracted similar controversy). Arne Duncan, who served as Secretary of Education under President Obama, noted that removal of the book from reading lists was evidence of a nation with "real problems". In 1966, a parent in Hanover, Virginia, protested that the use of rape as a plot device was immoral. Johnson cites examples of letters to local newspapers, which ranged from amusement to fury; those letters expressing the most outrage, however, complained about Mayella Ewell's attraction to Tom Robinson over the depictions of rape. Upon learning the school administrators were holding hearings to decide the book's appropriateness for the classroom, Harper Lee sent $10 to The Richmond News Leader suggesting it be used toward the enrollment of "the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice". The National Education Association in 1968 placed the novel second on a list of books receiving the most complaints from private organizations-after Little Black Sambo.

With a shift of attitudes about race in the 1970s, To Kill a Mockingbird faced challenges of a different sort: the treatment of racism in Maycomb was not condemned harshly enough. This has led to disparate perceptions that the novel has a generally positive impact on race relations for white readers, but a more ambiguous reception by black readers. In one high-profile case outside the U.S., school districts in the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia attempted to have the book removed from standard teaching curricula in the 1990s, stating:

The terminology in this novel subjects students to humiliating experiences that rob them of their self-respect and the respect of their peers. The word 'Nigger' is used 48 times [in] the novel ... We believe that the English Language Arts curriculum in Nova Scotia must enable all students to feel comfortable with ideas, feelings and experiences presented without fear of humiliation ... To Kill a Mockingbird is clearly a book that no longer meets these goals and therefore must no longer be used for classroom instruction.

Furthermore, despite the novel's thematic focus on racial injustice, its black characters are not fully examined. In its use of racial epithets, stereotyped depictions of superstitious blacks, and Calpurnia, who to some critics is an updated version of the " contented slave" motif and to others simply unexplored, the book is viewed as marginalizing black characters. One writer asserts that the use of Scout's narration serves as a convenient mechanism for readers to be innocent and detached from the racial conflict. Scout's voice "functions as the not-me which allows the rest of us-black and white, male and female-to find our relative position in society". A teaching guide for the novel published by The English Journal cautions, "what seems wonderful or powerful to one group of students may seem degrading to another". A Canadian language arts consultant found that the novel resonated well with white students, but that black students found it "demoralizing". With racism told from a white perspective with a focus on white courage and morality, some have labeled the novel as having a "white savior complex", a criticism also leveled at the film adaptation with its white savior narrative. Another criticism, articulated by Michael Lind, is that the novel indulges in classist stereotyping and demonization of poor rural "white trash".

The novel is cited as a factor in the success of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, however, in that it "arrived at the right moment to help the South and the nation grapple with the racial tensions (of) the accelerating civil rights movement". Its publication is so closely associated with the Civil Rights Movement that many studies of the book and biographies of Harper Lee include descriptions of important moments in the movement, despite the fact that she had no direct involvement in any of them. Civil Rights leader Andrew Young comments that part of the book's effectiveness is that it "inspires hope in the midst of chaos and confusion" and by using racial epithets portrays the reality of the times in which it was set. Young views the novel as "an act of humanity" in showing the possibility of people rising above their prejudices. Alabama author Mark Childress compares it to the impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book that is popularly implicated in starting the U.S. Civil War. Childress states the novel

gives white Southerners a way to understand the racism that they've been brought up with and to find another way. And most white people in the South were good people. Most white people in the South were not throwing bombs and causing havoc ... I think the book really helped them come to understand what was wrong with the system in the way that any number of treatises could never do, because it was popular art, because it was told from a child's point of view.

Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Birmingham campaign, asserts that To Kill a Mockingbird condemns racism instead of racists, and states that every child in the South has moments of racial cognitive dissonance when they are faced with the harsh reality of inequality. This feeling causes them to question the beliefs with which they have been raised, which for many children is what the novel does. McWhorter writes of Lee, "for a white person from the South to write a book like this in the late 1950s is really unusual-by its very existence an act of protest." Author James McBride calls Lee brilliant but stops short of calling her brave:

I think by calling Harper Lee brave you kind of absolve yourself of your own racism ... She certainly set the standards in terms of how these issues need to be discussed, but in many ways I feel ... the moral bar's been lowered. And that's really distressing. We need a thousand Atticus Finches.

McBride, however, defends the book's sentimentality, and the way Lee approaches the story with "honesty and integrity".

Harper Lee and President George W. Bush at the November 5, 2007, ceremony awarding Lee the Presidential Medal of Freedom for To Kill a Mockingbird

During the years immediately following the novel's publication, Harper Lee enjoyed the attention its popularity garnered her, granting interviews, visiting schools, and attending events honoring the book. In 1961, when To Kill a Mockingbird was in its 41st week on the bestseller list, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, stunning Lee. It also won the Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews in the same year, and the Paperback of the Year award from Bestsellers magazine in 1962. Starting in 1964, Lee began to turn down interviews, complaining that the questions were monotonous, and grew concerned that the attention she received bordered on the kind of publicity celebrities sought. Since then, she declined to talk with reporters about the book. She also steadfastly refused to provide an introduction, writing in 1995: "Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity. The only good thing about Introductions is that in some cases they delay the dose to come. Mockingbird still says what it has to say; it has managed to survive the years without preamble."

In 2001, Lee was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor. In the same year, Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley initiated a reading program throughout the city's libraries, and chose his favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird, as the first title of the One City, One Book program. Lee declared that "there is no greater honor the novel could receive". By 2004, the novel had been chosen by 25 communities for variations of the citywide reading program, more than any other novel. David Kipen of the National Endowment of the Arts, who supervised The Big Read, states "people just seem to connect with it. It dredges up things in their own lives, their interactions across racial lines, legal encounters, and childhood. It's just this skeleton key to so many different parts of people's lives, and they cherish it."

In 2006, Lee was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Notre Dame. During the ceremony, the students and audience gave Lee a standing ovation, and the entire graduating class held up copies of To Kill a Mockingbird to honor her. Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 5, 2007, by President George W. Bush. In his remarks, Bush stated, "One reason To Kill a Mockingbird succeeded is the wise and kind heart of the author, which comes through on every page ... To Kill a Mockingbird has influenced the character of our country for the better. It's been a gift to the entire world. As a model of good writing and humane sensibility, this book will be read and studied forever."

After remaining at number one throughout the entire five-month-long voting period in 2018, the American public, via PBS's The Great American Read, chose To Kill A Mockingbird as America's Favorite Book.

In 2003, the novel was listed at No. 6 on the BBC's The Big Read after a year-long survey of the British public, the highest ranking non-British book on the list. On November 5, 2019, BBC News listed To Kill a Mockingbird on its list of the 100 most influential novels. In 2020, the novel was number five on the list of "Top Check Outs OF ALL TIME" by the New York Public Library.

An earlier draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, titled Go Set a Watchman, was controversially released on July 14, 2015. This draft, which was completed in 1957, is set 20 years after the time period depicted in To Kill a Mockingbird but is not a continuation of the narrative. This earlier version of the story follows an adult Scout Finch who travels from New York City to visit her father, Atticus Finch, in Maycomb, Alabama, where she is confronted by the intolerance in her community. The Watchman manuscript was believed to have been lost until Lee's lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it, but this claim has been widely disputed. Watchman contains early versions of many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird. According to Lee's agent Andrew Nurnberg, Mockingbird was originally intended to be the first book of a trilogy: "They discussed publishing Mockingbird first, Watchman last, and a shorter connecting novel between the two." This assertion has been discredited, however, by rare-books expert James S. Jaffe, who reviewed the pages at the request of Lee's attorney and found them to be only another draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. Nurnberg's statement was also contrary to Jonathan Mahler's description of how Watchman was seen as just the first draft of Mockingbird. Instances where many passages overlap between the two books, in some case word for word, also refute this assertion. Both books were also investigated with the help of forensic linguistics and their comparative study confirmed that Harper Lee was their sole author.

Other media

Film producer Alan J. Pakula with Lee; Lee spent three weeks watching the filming, then "took off when she realized everything would be fine without her"[143]

The book was made into the well-received 1962 film with the same title, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. The film's producer, Alan J. Pakula, remembered Universal Pictures executives questioning him about a potential script: "They said, 'What story do you plan to tell for the film?' I said, 'Have you read the book?' They said, 'Yes.' I said, 'That's the story.'" The movie was a hit at the box office, quickly grossing more than $20 million from a $2-million budget. It won three Oscars: Best Actor for Gregory Peck, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for Horton Foote. It was nominated for five more Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Mary Badham, the actress who played Scout. At the time, she was the youngest actress nominated in the category.

Lee was pleased with the film, "In that film the man and the part met ... I've had many, many offers to turn it into musicals, into TV or stage plays, but I've always refused. That film was a work of art". Peck met Lee's father, the model for Atticus, before the filming. Lee's father died before the film's release. Lee was so impressed with Peck's performance that she gave him her father's pocket watch, which he had with him the evening he was awarded the Oscar for Best Actor. Years later, he was reluctant to tell Lee that the watch was stolen out of his luggage in London Heathrow Airport. When Peck eventually did tell Lee, she told him, "Well, it's only a watch". He said, "Harper-she feels deeply, but she's not a sentimental person about things". Lee and Peck shared a friendship long after the movie was made. Peck's grandson was named "Harper" in her honor.

In May 2005, Lee made an uncharacteristic appearance at the Los Angeles Public Library at the request of Peck's widow Veronique, who said of Lee:

She's like a national treasure. She's someone who has made a difference ... with this book. The book is still as strong as it ever was, and so is the film. All the kids in the United States read this book and see the film in the seventh and eighth grades and write papers and essays. My husband used to get thousands and thousands of letters from teachers who would send them to him.

The book was first adapted as a play by Christopher Sergel. This adaptation debuted in 1990 in Monroeville, a town that labels itself "The Literary Capital of Alabama". The play runs every May on the county courthouse grounds and townspeople make up the cast. White male audience members are chosen at the intermission to make up the jury. During the courtroom scene, the production moves into the Monroe County Courthouse and the audience is racially segregated. Author Albert Murray said of the relationship of the town to the novel (and the annual performance): "It becomes part of the town ritual, like the religious underpinning of Mardi Gras. With the whole town crowded around the actual courthouse, it's part of a central, civic education-what Monroeville aspires to be."

Sergel's play toured in the UK starting at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds in 2006, and again in 2011 starting at the York Theatre Royal, both productions featuring Duncan Preston as Atticus Finch. The play also opened the 2013 season at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in London where it played to full houses and starred Robert Sean Leonard as Atticus Finch, his first London appearance in 22 years. The production returned to the venue to close the 2014 season, prior to a UK tour.

According to a National Geographic article, the novel is so revered in Monroeville that people quote lines from it like Scripture; however, Harper Lee herself refused to attend any performances, because "she abhors anything that trades on the book's fame". To underscore this sentiment, Lee demanded that a book of recipes named Calpurnia's Cookbook not be published and sold out of the Monroe County Heritage Museum. David Lister in The Independent states that Lee's refusal to speak to reporters made them desire to interview her all the more, and her silence "makes Bob Dylan look like a media tart". Despite her discouragement, a rising number of tourists made Monroeville their destination, hoping to see Lee's inspiration for the book, or Lee herself. Local residents call them "Mockingbird groupies", and although Lee was not reclusive, she refused publicity and interviews with an emphatic "Hell, no!"

In 2018, a new adaptation was written by Aaron Sorkin, debuting on Broadway. The Broadway production was nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning one.

Graphic novel

In October 2018, Fred Fordham adapted and illustrated the story as a graphic novel. Some of the longer descriptive and commentary passages have been left out - "the bits that children tend to skip anyway" as C. J. Lyons says in her review of the graphic novel in the New York Journal of Books), who goes on to say "the heart of Lee's fictional 1933 Maycomb is faithfully recreated via the art and dialogue".

1. ^ To Kill a Mockingbird has appeared on numerous other lists that describe its impact. In 1999, it was voted the "Best Novel of the 20th century" by readers of the Library Journal. It is listed as number five on the Modern Library's Reader's List of the 100 Best Novels in the English language since 1900 and number four on the rival Radcliffe Publishing Course's Radcliffe Publishing Course's 100 Best Board Picks for Novels and Nonfiction Archived 2007-09-20 at the Wayback Machine. The novel appeared first on a list developed by librarians in 2006 who answered the question, "Which book should every adult read before they die?" followed by the Bible and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The British public voted in the BBC's Big Read broadcast to rank it 6th of all time in 2003. BBC - The Big Read. Two thousand readers at Play.com voted it the 'Greatest novel of all time' in 2008. (Urmee Khan, June 6, 2008. To Kill a Mockingbird voted Greatest Novel Of All Time, The Daily Telegraph).

2. In August 2009, ^ St. Edmund Campion Secondary School in Toronto removed To Kill a Mockingbird from the grade 10 curriculum because of a complaint regarding the language in the book. (Noor, Javed [August 12, 2009]. "Complaint prompts school to kill Mockingbird", The Star (Toronto). Retrieved on August 19, 2009.)

References

1. ^ "Mockingbird 'dropped from GCSE exam'". BBC News. May 25, 2014. Steinbeck's six-chapter novella written in 1937 about displaced ranch workers during the Great Depression

2. ^ Nelle Harper Lee Archived December 18, 2007, at the Wayback Machine Alabama Academy of Honor: Alabama Department of Archives and History (2001). Retrieved on November 13, 2007.

3. ^ Mahler, Jonathan (July 12, 2015). "The Invisible Hand Behind Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird'". The New York Times.

4. Lacher, Irene (May 21, 2005). "Harper Lee raises her low profile for a friend; The author of To Kill a Mockingbird shuns fanfare. But for the kin of Gregory Peck", Los Angeles Times, p. E.1

5. Hile, Kevin S. "Harper Lee" in ^ Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Gale Research 13 (August 1994) ISBN 978-0-8103-8566-5

6. ^ Chura, Patrick (Spring 2000). "Prolepsis and Anachronism: Emmett Till and the Historicity of To Kill a Mockingbird", Southern Literary Journal 32 (2), p. 1.

7. About Life & Little Girls (August 1, 1980). Retrieved on February 15, 2008.

8. Adams, Phoebe (August 1960). "To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee [review]". The Atlantic Monthly. 206 (2): 98-99. Archived from the original on July 21, 2015.

9. LeMay, Harding (July 10, 1960). "Children Play; Adults Betray", New York Herald Tribune.

10. Ware, Michele "'Just a Lady': Gender and Power in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird" in Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen S. Silber (eds.), Greenwood Press (2003). ISBN 978-0-313-31346-2.

11. "Harper Lee Twits School Board In Virginia for Ban on Her Novel", The New York Times (January 6, 1966), p. 82

12. ^ Shackelford, Dean (Winter 1996-1997). "The Female Voice in To Kill a Mockingbird: Narrative Strategies in Film and Novel", Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures, 50 (1), pp. 101-113.

13. "What Kids Are Reading: The Book Reading Habits of Students in American Schools", Renaissance Learning, Inc., 2008. Retrieved on July 11, 2008. See also ^ "What Kids Are Reading: The Book Reading Habits of Students in American Schools Archived 2012-03-14 at the Wayback Machine, Renaissance Learning, Inc. 2010. Retrieved on May 1, 2011. where To Kill a Mockingbird appears at number 2.

14. ^ Puente, Maria (July 8, 2010). "'To Kill a Mockingbird': Endearing, enduring at 50 years". USA Today. "It is Lee's only book and one of the handful that could earn the title of Great American Novel."

15. Zorn, Eric (July 9, 2010), ^ 'Mockingbird' still sings after 50 years Archived July 12, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved on July 10, 2010.

16. Mallon, Thomas (May 29, 2006). "Big Bird: A biography of the novelist Harper Lee", ^ The New Yorker, 82 (15), p. 79.

17. ^ "What's the Best Book of the Past 125 Years? We Asked Readers to Decide". The New York Times. December 29, 2021.

18. ^ "Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009". Archived from the original on April 8, 2011.

19. ^ Balingit, Moriah (December 3, 2016). "School district weighs ban of Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn after complaint". The Washington Post.

20. ^ Zorthian, Julia (October 16, 2017). "People Are Not Happy That This School District Banned Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird". .

21. ^ Nelson, Karen (October 25, 2017). "Biloxi to teach To Kill A Mockingbird in class again. Parents must sign permission slip". .

22. ^ Summers, Zakiya (October 17, 2017). "ACLU of MS Responds to Biloxi Officials' Ban of To Kill a Mockingbird" (Press release). American Civil Liberties Union.

23. ^ Duncan, Arne [@arneduncan] (October 14, 2017). "When school districts remove 'To Kill A Mockingbird' from the reading list, we know we have real problems. trib.al/2zObDXh" (Tweet) - via Twitter.

24. Saney, Isaac (July-September 2003). "The Case Against To Kill a Mockingbird" ^ Race & Class 45 (1), pp. 99-110. doi:10.1177/0306396803045001005

25. Suhor, Charles, Bell, Larry ^ "Preparing to Teach To Kill a Mockingbird, The English Journal(1997) 86 (4), pp. 1-16. doi:10.2307/820996

26. Bellafante, Ginia (January 20, 2006). Harper Lee, Gregarious for a Day, The New York Times. Retrieved on November 13, 2007.

27. ^ "100 'most inspiring' novels revealed by BBC Arts". . November 5, 2019. The reveal kickstarts the BBC's year-long celebration of literature.

28. ^ Alison Flood (February 5, 2015). "Harper Lee's 'lost' novel was intended to complete a trilogy, says agent". The Guardian.

29. "Expert Says Manuscript Is Not Harper Lee's Third Novel". The New York Times. September 1, 2015.

30. ^ Keith Collins (July 14, 2015). "See how Harper Lee's 'Go Set a Watchman' became 'To Kill a Mockingbird'". Quartz.

31. ^ To Kill a Mockingbird (film) Archived 2012-03-04 at the Wayback Machine Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved on March 29, 2008.

32. ^ Chilton, Martin (February 4, 2015). "Robert Duvall hails return of Harper Lee". The Telegraph. London, England: Telegraph Media Group Limited. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022.

33. Bobbin, Jay (December 21, 1997). "Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's ^ To Kill a Mockingbird", The Birmingham News (Alabama), p. 1.F

34. ^ Walker, Lynne (September 30, 2006). "To Kill A Mockingbird, West Yorkshire, Leeds Playhouse". The Independent. Archived from the original on June 21, 2022.

35. ^ Brown, Jonathan (February 23, 2011). "To Kill a Mockingbird, Theatre Royal, York". The Independent. Archived from the original on June 21, 2022.

36. Newman, Cathy (January 2006). ^ To Catch a Mockingbird Archived 2006-11-17 at the Wayback Machine, National Geographic. Retrieved on November 11, 2007.

37. C. J. Lyons. "To Kill a Mockingbird: A Graphic Novel". New York Journal of Books.

Bibliography

Further reading

Santopietro, Tom (2018). Why To Kill a Mockingbird Matters: What Harper Lee's Book and the Iconic American Film Mean to Us Today. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1-250-16375-2.

External links

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To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by the American author Harper Lee. It was published in 1960 and was instantly successful. In the United States, it is widely read in high schools and middle schools. To Kill a Mockingbird has become a classic of modern American literature; a year after its release, it won the Pulitzer Prize.

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Cady Heron is a hit with The Plastics, the A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George. Cady Heron is a hit with The Plastics, the A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George. Cady Heron is a hit with The Plastics, the A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George.

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Mean Girls: Directed by Mark Waters. With Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Tina Fey, Tim Meadows. Cady Heron is a hit with The Plastics, the A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George.

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1. I Carry Your Heart With Me (E.E. Cummings)

The deep connection and intimacy between two people, where one carries the essence and love of the other within them at all times, regardless of physical distance or circumstance.

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1. The Princess Diaries (Novel)

2. The House on Jonker Street (Short Story)

3. The Summer I Turned Pretty (Novel)

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The Princess Diaries is the first volume of the series of the same name by Meg Cabot. It was released in 2000 by Harper Collins Publishers, and later became a film of the same name starring Anne Hathaway.

Mia Thermopolis is an average urban ninth grader. She lives in Greenwich Village with her single, liberal mother, who is a semi-famous painter, but Mia puts on her Doc Martens one at a time, and the most exciting things she ever dreams about are kissing senior Josh Richter ("six feet of hotness") and passing Algebra. Mia's father comes to town and drops a major bomb: he's not just a European politician as he's always led her to believe, but actually the prince of a small country. And Mia, his only heir, is now considered the crown princess of Genovia. She doesn't even know how to begin to cope: "I am so NOT a princess.... You never saw anyone who looked less like a princess than I do. I mean, I have really bad hair... and... a really big mouth and no breasts and feet that look like skis." Mia's troubles are worsened: her mother has started dating her algebra teacher (Frank Gianini), the paparazzi are showing up at school, and she has a fight with her best friend Lilly. After this they don't talk for a while and become distant from each other. Mia goes to her Grandmère's Plaza Hotel room in order to begin princess training, where she starts to develop into a great princess. Throughout the story Mia also makes another friend named Tina, who is shunned because of her overprotective father, who makes her have a bodyguard.

Mia Thermopolis: Describes herself as a five-foot nine, flat chested, freshman, freak; also known as Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo, Princess of Genovia. Mia loves to write, has a tendency to obsess over everything that happens to her, is a vegetarian, identifies as a feminist and is currently failing algebra and many other subjects.

Grandmere: Mia's grandmother, who loves Sidecars, is highly critical of everyone around her. She has a hairless poodle, Rommel, and she calls Michael Moscovitz that boy. Her full name is The Dowager Princess Clarisse Renaldo. Mia and her Grandmother don't get along with each other for most of the story.

Lilly Moscovitz: Mia's bossy activist best friend, who has her own television cable show, Lilly Tells It Like It Is.

Michael Moscovitz: Lilly's older brother, who is extremely smart and according to Mia, is attractive. Also Mia's crush.

Lana Weinberger: Head cheerleader, initially Josh's girlfriend, dislikes Mia and puts her down throughout the book.

Josh Richter: Mia's crush, "six feet of unadulterated hotness." Originally dating Lana at the beginning of the story, he is shown to have manipulative tendencies.

Helen Thermopolis: Mia's quirky painter mother, who surprises Mia by dating her algebra teacher. She is described as irresponsible.

Philippe Renaldo: Mia's royal father, who is the prince of Genovia. He had Mia out of wedlock, and is constantly annoyed by his domineering mother, has many girlfriends, and tells Mia that she is a princess after he is no longer able to have children because he had cancer.

Tina Hakim-Baba: A girl whom Mia befriends throughout the novel. Her father is an oil man sheikh who is worried that she will get kidnapped. She originally is shunned because her overprotective father forces her to have a bodyguard (Wahim), but she and Mia quickly become close.

Frank Gianini: Mia's algebra and homeroom teacher and he dates her mother, Helen. Mia grows to appreciate his after-school algebra review sessions, and though their relationship begins awkwardly, Mia and Mr. G seem to get along well.

Lars: Mia's bodyguard. He follows her almost everywhere and lives in the Plaza. Has some serious blackmail on Mia, having followed her around everywhere.

Fat Louie: Mia's very fat cat who is attracted to anything shiny.

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The Princess Diaries (novel) - Wikipedia

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The Princess Diaries is the first volume of the series of the same name by Meg Cabot. It was released in 2000 by Harper Collins Publishers, and later became a film of the same name starring Anne Hathaway. Mia Thermopolis is an average urban ninth grader.

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4. Poem - Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun by William Shakespeare 

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4. Poem - Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun by William Shakespeare 

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Sonnet

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Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like… | Poetry Foundation

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My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

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https://youtu.be/0iNmVVlmmv8?feature=shared

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https://youtu.be/-a1qTzh16hY?si=kbGU41d1zY8b5MLI

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https://youtu.be/LEjhY15eCx0?feature=shared

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https://youtu.be/jpqV3dzYOgk?si=uRccXW5pTxs7DuT7

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https://youtu.be/CzcGwB7qat8?feature=shared

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Miss Miyuki decides to rearrange the students in her class according to their class rankings. With their top marks, Mia and Emilia get to sit together, buy Joni is seated among the students with the lowest marks in the class. Their classmate Jane grabs the chance to take Joni's place in Candy JEM. Determined to sit with her friends again, Joni starts tuition lessons from her older brother Julian to improve her results. Will Joni succeed? Will Jane succeed in her sneaky plan to replace Joni?

Miss Miyuki decides to rearrange the students in her class according to their class rankings. With their top marks, Mia and Emilia get to sit together, buy Joni is seated among the students with the lowest marks in the class. Their classmate Jane grabs the chance to take Joni's place in Candy JEM. Determined to sit with her friends again, Joni starts tuition lessons from her older brother Julian to improve her results. Will Joni succeed? Will Jane succeed in her sneaky plan to replace Joni?

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Browse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the National Library of Malaysia digital collection.

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I’m not a girl, not yet a woman - Britney Spears

a song that spoke of the angst and heartache of puberty.

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I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman - Britney Spears (Lyrics)

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https://youtu.be/IuY4-6qWm-8?feature=shared

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2. I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

Sight of the daffodils brings the speaker joy and inspiration, lifting their spirits and filling them with a sense of awe and wonder. The poem explores the power of nature to evoke deep emotions and the connection between the external world and the inner life of the individual.

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Genre (Songs, Poems, Short stories, and Dramas)

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Genre (Songs, Poems, Short stories, and Dramas)

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The Cranberries Linger

Dolores O'Riordan has said that the song was written about her first boyfriend and “being broken-hearted by a love situation. You love somebody but they reject you”.

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Coldplay Viva La Vida

It symbolizes someone who just like a king can have everything in one moment and nothing in another. The song is a lesson to acknowledge that nothing is forever and that we should learn to appreciate and value what we have at the moment because it may not be there tomorrow.

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Coldplay - Viva La Vida (Official Video)

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Dean Lewis Be Alright

“Be Alright” is a deep and meaningful song about the hardships of a break-up. Completely destroyed, Dean goes to a friend for help who offers the very painful, but necessary advice to move on.

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Dean Lewis - Be Alright (Official Video)

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Novel in verse

•’Every Body Looking‘ by Candice Lloh

Tells the story of Ada–daughter of an immigrant father and an African American mother–and her struggle to find a place for herself in America and in her own family

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Every Body Looking by Candice Iloh · Audiobook preview

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Aurora Runaway

the song conveys a sense of yearning for a deeper connection with oneself and the world around us, as well as a longing for a more authentic and fulfilling existence. It encourages listeners to embrace their true selves and to pursue their dreams and desires without reservation.

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13 Reasons Why- Talks about mental health, Peer pressure and influence

2. Wednesday

Emphasizes on how a mystery or problem can be solved by critically analysing it

3. Stranger things -love, relationships friendship

4. Life of Pi- Conveys a strong message (life can and will be difficult), ways to not give up and grow stronger, individual faith

5. Ginny and Georgia - talks about teenage struggles, self harming awareness, love of a mother who would do anything for her daughter

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Young Adult Lit Genre : Give examples for every category: Songs, Poems, Drama/Movies, Stories (Briefly explain why do you think the literature fits to be a Young Adult Literature)

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Young Adult Lit Genre : Give examples for every category: Songs, Poems, Drama/Movies, Stories (Briefly explain why do you think the literature fits to be a Young Adult Literature)

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Based on this article, create a GO that encapsulates its content

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Based on this article, create a GO that encapsulates its content

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Share the recordings of the Twinkle song you performed in class here..

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Share the recordings of the Twinkle song you performed in class here..

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Group Members: Sarmila, Yoaha, Hafiz, Daniel & Azmir 

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Young Adult A Book by Any Other Name defining the genre

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Group members:

Vissalini

Shaarane

Siti Noorhaliza

Atikah

D.Thirumangai

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colorful playful creative main idea Graphic organizer

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Check out this A4 (Landscape) designed by BI20921 Shaarane Jaysri A/P Paramasivan.

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Group members:

Wei Yin

Jia Xi

Alice

Xin Yi

Jun Jing

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Colorful Illustrative Mind Map Brainstorm

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Group members

•Sarmila

•Yuvalaxme

•Yoaha

•Sasmithaa

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Group members : Karthika, Koomalar, Mahaashwetaa, Jasmine

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Title : Beyond Bird Nest

Theme: Independence/ self-growth

Group members:

Siti

Shaarane

Vissalini

Thirumangai

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Obesity🧁

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There once was a girl who loved eating

All she did was binge eating

Her weight blew up, her mood was down

But she kept eating.

Soon when the rider came

She rushed down for her pizza and cake

Half past the eating is done

Another rider knocked.

She've been craving for some rice

She went to order chicken rice

When the seller asked 'Extra rice?'

She said 'Yes, of course'.

Soon when the rider came

She rushed down for her pizza and cake

Half past the eating is done

Another rider knocked.

When she couldn't fit in her dress

She went to the doctor for a check

That's when it hit her for real

That she messed it up.

By: Sarmila, Sasmithaa, Lax & Yoaha

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By: Esther, Jia Xi, Wei Yin, Xin Yi, Alice

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By: Aziq, Mahaashwetaa, Thirumangai, Thachaini, Esther