85 pages • 2 hours read
Kathryn ErskineMockingbird
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Essay Topics
What is the impact on a community where a school shooting occurs? Kathryn Erskine acknowledged that she wrote Mockingbird as a response to the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech University, just a few miles from where Erskine lives. Research that school shooting, including the statements from survivors and from the families of those who died, and discuss it in the context of Caitlin’s search for closure.
Caitlin is a first-person narrator. How does her narration reveal aspects of Asperger’s? How does that formal device influence the novel’s themes? Is the novel more about a school shooting or Asperger’s?
Josh is perhaps the novel’s most complicated character. He is a bully, but in his own way he is a victim of the school shooting. Using the two scenes on the playground and Michael’s evolving friendship with him, describe and analyze Josh’s character.
Watch To Kill a Mockingbird. Using the character of Atticus Finch and Caitlin’s perception of the scene in which Atticus shoots the rabid dog, consider the strengths and weaknesses of Caitlin’s father. In what ways does the novel suggest that real life is more special than the black-and-white world of the film?
Research mission chests. How does completing that piece of furniture symbolically bring not only closure but community? Why might the author have selected a mission chest as the vehicle for bringing together Caitlin and her father?
What is the significance of the novel’s title? Given Devon’s explanation of the title of To Kill a Mockingbird, which characters in Erskine’s book are “mockingbirds,” and why?
Why does Caitlin fear colors? Select several of the quotes from the art teacher and Caitlin’s own argument against color and show how the closing scene demonstrates Caitlin’s emotional and psychological growth.
Michael, whose mother also died in the shooting, offers Caitlin a chance at significant growth and character development. He is only in first grade, but he teaches Caitlin a lot. What does Michael teach Caitlin?
“You’re the kind of special that’s a little weird” (175), Caitlin’s schoolmates tell her. Research how neurotypical kids treat classmates with autism and how that treatment impacts those students’ perceptions of themselves. How does this inform your understanding of the friendship between Caitlin and Michael?
Take any of these objects from the novel and show how they reveal critical dimensions of Caitlin’s character: the color red; Caitlin’s hidey-hole; the movie Bambi; stuffed-animaling; Caitlin’s habit of capitalizing random letters in words; hinges; or the facial expressions chart.
