Harper Lee wrote a book call ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ which was a number one best seller for a couple years after it came out. Harper Lee’s book is still very famous today in high schools for teaching kids.(Wilder, Mike) One of the most interesting things that Harper Lee used real life events in her book. She also used people in her life as characters in her book.
Harper Lee, her real name was Nelle Harper Lee, was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. Harper’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was a lawyer, a member of the Alabama State Legislature and he also owned part of the local newspaper. Harper’s mother was a manic depressive, which means that she was there physically just not mentally. (Biography.com Editors) Since her mother, Frances Finch Lee, had a mental illness and she would rarely leave the house, she would have to do the normal things a mother would do. Lee had two older sisters, Alice Finch Lee and …show more content…
The book was more than a coming-of-age-story, the book is still a well known story that is used all of the United States . Lee has won numerous awards for the book including the Pulitzer Prize and many other literary awards. She also got the Presidential Medal of Freedom that President George W. Bush presented her with for her “outstanding Contribution to America’s literary tradition” at a ceremony at the White House in November 2007. The book itself had sold 10 million copies in the 1970’s(Biography.com Editors) and is has been translated into more than 40 languages with more than a million copies sold each year.(Wilder, Mike) In 1988 the National Council of Teachers of English reported that the book was being taught in 74 percent of the nation’s secondary schools.(Biography.com Editors) A decade later Library Journal said that that book was the best novel of the 20th