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Sunday Classics : To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

On Teacher’s Day, we revisit Atticus Finch, who taught us to stand up for our beliefs

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a modern classic set in Alabama, US. It is a girl’s eye view of a sleepy town in the American south in the 1930s, chronicling the daily life, adventures, struggles and questions of six-year-old Jean Louise, aka Scout. The book is made even more special by Scout’s widowed father Atticus Finch. Unlike most parents we meet in real life or fiction, Atticus does not infantilise his children, treating them instead like individuals who deserve answers. In racially segregated America, despite being a white man, he decides to defend a black man falsely accused of raping a white girl and teaches his children lessons in conscience, kindness, self-belief, justice and integrity.