Mockingbird: (mok'ing-bûrd)-Summary, Impression, Peer Review, & Library Use
Title: Mockingbird: (mok'ing-bûrd)
Author: Kathryn Erskine
Book Summary: The novel opens with Caitlyn, a 5th grader, looking at a chest covered with a sheet in the corner of a room. The chest was her brother’s Eagle Scout project, but now Devon will not be able to finish it because he has tragically died in a school shooting that also took the lives of 2 others. Caitlyn, though, struggles with more than Devon’s death; she has Asperger’s. Their mother passed away two years earlier to cancer, so this leaves only Caitlyn and her father to figure out how to come to grips with the loss and move on with life. Due to her Asperger’s, Caitlyn also has daily set-backs at school building friendships with her peers. Through Mrs. Brook, a counselor at school, Caitlyn’s is guided down the path to discovering empathy, building friendships, and uncovering how her and her father can find the closure they each need and seek. With encouragement from the middle school art teacher she is encouraged to express whatever she is feeling through creativity and this comes in handy while working with a group at school and her plan for Devon’s chest. Together her and her father work to finish Devon’s Eagle Scout project. Yet, even with its completion, Caitlyn knows there are others in her community in need of closure. With her artistic carving of a mockingbird on the lid and Devon’s name for her, Scout, on the bottom they present it at a remembrance ceremony held at her brother’s middle school. In more ways than one, the school community as well as Caitlyn and her father can now finally start to move forward much stronger than they were in the beginning.
APA Reference:
Erskine, K. (2010). Mockingbird: mok'ing-bûrd. New York, NY: Philomel Books.
Impressions: Many young people can make a connection to Caitlyn’s loss of her brother solely because of the introduction of intruder alert drills and emergency evacuation bags into school settings (classrooms) over the last seven years. Also with the strides made in inclusion versus pull-out, students are accustomed to having a diverse classroom with each student special in a unique way. Whether a reader has known someone with a form of autism, a person who is withdrawn, or individuals struggling with social skills they will be able to identify with Caitlyn and/or other supporting characters in this story. This story provides a thoughtful reminder to all readers to embrace and celebrate differences by identifying with the basic human emotion of feeling loss whether it be from a favorite object, pet, or family member. Katheryn Erskine shares in an Author’s Note in the back of the book her inspiration for the novel was the shootings at Virginia Tech University in 2007 plus her own need to explain what it is like for a child to have Asperger’s Syndrome.
Professional Review: “Devon always tells me. Now I don’t know anymore.” Such is the predicament of ten-year-old Caitlin, whose Asperger’s syndrome makes social understanding difficult, and whose staunch support in helping her negotiate human relations was her older brother, Devon. Now Devon is dead in a tragic school shooting, Caitlin’s father is mired in grief, and Caitlin is attempting to sort out this changed version of her life pretty much on her own. While autistic-spectrum disorders are a fairly common topic in children’s literature at the moment, Caitlin is a distinct personality, and the book allows her some genuinely off-putting habits and mannerisms as well as making her sympathetic through her narration; underneath her protagonist’s voice, Erskine has a smooth and accessible style that keeps the story flowing. The book is rather over packed with message, symbolism, and hackneyed emotional journeys, however, straining credulity to get everybody to resolution and to do so in a way that allows readers in on the process, and Caitlin devolves from a character into a sentimental cliché, the innocent vessel through which wisdom is conveyed. For readers who appreciate an emotional family story, however, the book offers some gentle reading on a complicated subject.
Stevenson, D. (2010, May). [Review of the book Mockingbird by Erkine, K.]. Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, 63(9), 377. https://doi.org/10.1353/bcc.0.1714
Library Use: This book would be great for use with students in grades 4th – 7th. Students can work together to identify six songs that could represent six different events from the book. They will design an album cover