Mockingbird Monday: Oak Trees, Shooting Stars, Rediscovering Curiosity and Wonder

I love the sequence in Harper Lee’s novel when the children catch the glint of something in an oak tree on their travels from school. The tree is part of the scenery of routine life for Jem and Scout; they pass it each and every day. I was speaking in the south several months ago […]

An Interview with Charles J. Shields, Author of New York Times Bestseller – Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

Charles J. Shields’s masterful biography, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, was a New York Times Bestseller during the summer of 2006 and is currently in its 8th printing. Shields spent years researching and writing the biography of Harper Lee. He is a former English teacher who taught To Kill a Mockingbird for a number […]

To Kill a Mockingbird Reminds Us That Compassion Holds the Key to Change (Huffington Post)

From political campaigns to prime-time television, our collective desire for change is given lip-service in almost every area of American life. We long for lasting change and cheer it on when we get a glimpse of it: from elections, to Wall Street reforms, to transformations of the biggest loser we yearn to believe it can […]