Scouting Out Barnes and Noble by Heather

Scouting Out Barnes and Noble by Heather - May 2017 Scholarship Essay

December 2009, Barnes and Noble. A scruffy fifth grade girl stands and stares in awe at hundreds of different possibilities. She looks at the pristine covers and smells the ink covered pages. She fans each book, thinking maybe that a book will call to her and help her make a decision. There are too many to pick from. Her Christmas gift card only has so much money. Consulting her mother, she walks to the register with three books: "Anne Frank Diary of a Young Girl," "Choker," "To Kill a Mockingbird."

My fifth-grade handwriting marks the inside cover, which is taped on. A thin shred holds the back on. It is soft as velvet when you fan the bottom right corner of the pages. A hot chocolate stain marks page 155 right over “Calpurnia.” Another blotches the word “Maycomb” on page 293, this one of an unknown origin.

I do not know how many times I’ve read "To Kill a Mockingbird:. We read it for school once in eighth grade, and by then I had read it at least fifteen times. Of course, as a fifth grader I got something much different from the book than I do now. I knew that Tom Robinson had been wronged. I knew that it was wrong for many of the townspeople to be racist. I knew that Atticus Finch was an admirable man. I knew these things, but I didn’t understand that they were relevant to the world I lived in, and live in today.

The first time I read the novel, I was determined to be like Scout. She was stubborn and unafraid and stood her ground. I taught myself to spit just like Scout. I loved reading just like she did; my dad read to me like Atticus read to her. I found a parallel in my life for almost every action of hers. I was Scout and I loved her, but Boo Radley enthralled me. I was wholly engrossed when a paragraph described Boo. The way I picture him now, is the exact same as I did then. He is eerily similar to a vampire in my mind. As a fifth grader, I was in love with the imagery and the details of the story. I could imagine each and every character perfectly. This was the first book I ever loved. "To Kill a Mockingbird" increased my liking of reading to my burning desire for it.

As I got older and reread the book in my middle school years, I realized the social injustice of Tom Robinson’s situation. I was sickened that a man, an honest, helpful man, would be convicted of a crime, uncommitted. How could the jury see his shriveled left hand and “dead arm” and let Ewell go? It was so unfair and I had never experienced anything like it in my sheltered life. As I grew up, the book grew up with me. I realized I didn’t know what the world could really be like. It made me think about my actions and how I perceived others actions. I realized that I was a huge deal that Barack Obama had been elected president and that there were people that genuinely did not like him because he was black. And this was 2011.

During my later high school treks through the story, I realized there are many mockingbirds throughout the story. To this day, I think about Dill sipping coke with Mr. Raymond outside the courthouse. I think about how desensitized children have become in contemporary society; innocence is hard to come by. These days, the book provides me with a world apart my mine. It fills me with nostalgia, I can be ten years old again when I read it. It also unveils injustice in my world and has shaped my view of society. Not everything is black and white. After all, the Cunninghams supported Atticus.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" has sculpted my outlook on the world. I believe that it has influenced me more than any other book because you can swim through the depths of the novel. At an elementary level, I could take away a love for reading and a grasp of an unfair world. As I grew, I was able to glean more knowledge from the book. As I continue to grow as a person, my experiences change what I see in each character and their strengths. I will continue to flip the smooth pages and sink into the world of Maycomb. I will continue to learn and grow from reading. Maybe when I’m 94 it’ll come full circle and I’ll be back to wishing I was just like Scout Finch.