Death of a Mockingbird

Like every summer since the beginning of time (well, since Timothy started grade school) I have insisted he have a summer reading regimen which includes both an afternoon and an evening reading time. Evidently I'm a mean mommy, but despite some genetic anomaly in which Timothy received all of Joe's engineering/math genes and NONE of my reading/poetic genes, summer is about books.


Amazingly, it's not a forced march anymore, although it used to be. There were past summers when reading meant setting a timer, or holding off on the Xbox until one more chapter, or making a bargain whereby a finished book meant a Dairy Queen treat.


Perhaps it's because he's maturing, or maybe it's because high school is looming large and scary in the fall, but these days he picks up a book (without prompting) at least twice a day. So far he's read Lois Lowry's The Giver, Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and right now he's is in the middle of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Our goal is to finish up the summer with Homer's Odyssey.


Speaking of To Kill a Mockingbird ... it's been many years since I read it, and I  had forgotten how much I loved that book. But I also realized something. I'm several chapters ahead of Timothy, and I see now that we are going to have to sit down and discuss what rape means. Because I don't think he knows. And when you mix in racism, violence and cruelty, mankind doesn't look so ... kind.


And as much as I love talking about books with my son, as much as I relish these opportunities to explore themes and human nature, why does the thought of this conversation feel like the death of a mockingbird?