Adapting a novel as universally beloved as Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird into a graphic novel is fraught with peril. For many students, Lee's compassionate and humorous coming-of-age tale is their first exposure to grappling with issues of racial inequality, gender roles and compassion for those different in color, class and beliefs. Nevertheless, Fred Fordham (who illustrated Philip Pullman's The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship) has done a magnificent job adapting and illustrating the 1960 classic.
Set in Alabama over a three-year period (1933-1936), To Kill a Mockingbird is told from the point of view of six-year-old Jean Louise Finch (aka Scout), whose lawyer father is defending a black man accused of raping a white woman. Although judiciously edited, Fordham's adaptation is amazingly faithful to the novel--even more faithful than Horton Foote's Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1962 film starring Gregory Peck as lawyer Atticus Finch. (Atticus's sister, Aunt Alexandra, was absent from the film but is present in this new medium. Mrs. Dubose, the antebellum morphine addict down the street, also regains her prominence from the novel.)
Fordham's full-color illustrations are vibrant, imaginative and detailed. And his text adaption retains the simple poetry and wry humor of Lee's writing. This beautiful, full-color graphic novel incarnation is sure to please Lee's fans and win new devotees. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant