SOURCE: Jolley, Susan Arpajian. “Integrating Poetry and To Kill a Mockingbird.” English Journal 92, no. 2 (November 2002): 34-40.

In the following essay, Jolley discusses her approach to teaching To Kill a Mockingbird to high school students in conjunction with the study of poetry treating themes of courage and compassion.

O Mockingbird, Mockingbird! Wherefore art thou so popular? And wherefore art thou so maligned? So popular, in fact, that the mayor of Chicago would exhort his denizens to read and discuss you en masse? So popular that more than 30 million copies of you have been sold since your publication in 1960 (Carrier 216)? And so maligned that writer Francine Prose calls you a “sentimental, middlebrow favorite” (76), refers to your presence in public school curricula as “grisly” (77), and urges that high school students be shielded from your likes and exposed to a strict diet of top-flight writers like Kafka, Shakespeare, and Twain.

I maintain...