Wizards, time-travelers, and wealthy English gentlemen and ladies were no match for a small-town girl. Harper Lee’s 1960 book To Kill a Mockingbird ran away with the prize in the PBS TV “The Great American Read” contest.
The purpose of “The Great American Read” series and survey was to discover America’s best-loved novel—and to promote reading. The winner was announced Tuesday night on the show’s finale. The series profiled the contenders and let bookworms, famous and not, advocate for their pick.
More than four million votes were cast in the six-month-long contest that pitted 100 beloved book titles against one another. Books that were published as a series counted as a single entry.
The other top-five finishers in order of votes were Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series about a time-spanning love; J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter boy wizard tales; Jane Austen’s romance Pride and Prejudice; and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings fantasy saga.
But Mockingbird pulled in the top spot from the very first day. The coming-of-age story about racism and injustice in the American Deep South clearly won the top choice of best-loved novel by readers nationwide.
The novel is author Harper Lee’s only book—with the exception of a manuscript discovered late in the author’s life. That manuscript was published just months before Lee’s death at age 89. The book, called Go Set a Watchman, is considered a publication of a working document Lee used with the help of her editor to develop her story and characters for To Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. The book has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. It remains a fixture on school reading lists—typically for high school. Set in the 1930s South, the book tells the story of attorney Atticus Finch and his young children—a daughter he calls Scout and a son named Jem. Finch is enlisted to defend an African-American man falsely accused of assaulting a white woman. The trial and its consequences open young Scout’s eyes to the good and bad, justice and injustice, in the world around her.
This combination photo shows author Harper Lee in 2007 and the cover of her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The book was voted America’s best-loved novel in PBS’s “Great American Read” survey. (AP Photos)
