Read-alikes
The following book titles are primarily young adult novels that share similar themes, content, or issues as To Kill a Mockingbird. There are also a texts discussing Harper Lee or her novel. They are all available to check out in the library, and several are also available on Sora.
Internment by Samira Ahmed
Set in a horrifying near-future United States, seventeen-year-old Layla Amin and her parents are forced into an internment camp for Muslim American citizens. Layla begins a journey to fight for freedom, leading a revolution against the internment camp's Director and his guards.
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Also available on Sora
Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles
When Marvin Johnson's twin brother, Tyler, is shot and killed by a police officer, Marvin must fight injustice to learn the true meaning of freedom.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
A blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
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Also available on Sora
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Fourteen-year-old Lily and her companion, Rosaleen, an African-American woman who has cared for Lily since her mother's death ten years earlier, flee their home after Rosaleen is victimized by racist police officers, and find a safe haven in Tiburon, South Carolina at the home of three beekeeping sisters, May, June, and August.
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Also available on Sora
Fire in the Streets by Kekla Magoon
In the aftermath of Dr. King's assassination in 1968, Chicago fourteen-year-old Maxie longs to join the Black Panthers, whether or not her brother Raheem, ex-boyfriend Sam, or her friends like it, and is soon caught up in the violence of anti-war and civil rights demonstrations.
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A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck
A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds
When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend.
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Also available on Sora
The Warden's Daughter by Jerry Spinelli
Living with her warden father in an apartment above a 1950s prison, Cammie O'Reilly struggles to come to terms with the loss of her mother, who died saving her from harm when she was a baby, and interacts with some of the reformed inmates.
Give Me Some Truth by Eric Gansworth
In 1980 life is hard on the Tuscarora Reservation in upstate New York, and most of the teenagers feel like they are going nowhere: Carson Mastick dreams of forming a rock band, and Maggi Bokoni longs to create her own conceptual artwork instead of the traditional beadwork that her family sells to tourists--but tensions are rising between the reservation and the surrounding communities, and somehow in the confusion of politics and growing up Carson and Maggi have to make a place for themselves.
The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg
It is summer in Phoenix, and seventeen-year-old Maximo offers to help a Jordan, a fellow student in high school, with the food truck that belonged to Jordan's deceased father, and which may be the only thing standing between homelessness for Jordan and his mom; the boys are strongly attracted to each other, but as their romance develops it is threatened by the secrets they are hiding--and by the racism and homophobia of those around them.
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Also available on Sora
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experience on prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
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Also available on Sora and as a graphic novel
Angel of Greenwood by Randi Pink
Randi Pink's The Angel of Greenwood is a historical YA novel that takes place during the Greenwood Massacre of 1921, in an area of Tulsa, OK, known as the 'Black Wall Street'
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Also available on Sora
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez
Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga s role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed.
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Also available on Sora
Dear Martin by Nic Stone
Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.
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Available on Sora, as well as the sequel, Dear Justyce
Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry by Mildred Taylor
Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.
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Available on Sora, as well as the sequel, Let the Circle Be Unbroken
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does--or does not--say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.
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Available on Sora, as well as the prequel, Concrete Rose and spin-off, On the Come Up
Rikers High
Arrested on a minor offense, a New York City teenager attends high school in the jail facility on Rikers Island while waiting for his case to go to court.
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Brown Girl Dreaming
The author shares her childhood memories and reveals the first sparks that ignited her writing career in free-verse poems about growing up in the North and South.
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Also available on Sora
Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi
Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, because of a biased system he's seen as disruptive and unmotivated. Then, one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal is convicted of a crime he didn't commit.
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Also available on Sora
I am Scout: Biography of Harper Lee
An exploration of the life and achievements of Harper Lee that discusses her Southern upbringing, education, family, writing of "To Kill a Mockingbird," association with Truman Capote, and personality.
Reading and Interpreting the Works of Harper Lee by Elizabeth Schmermund
For most of her life, Harper Lee was (reluctantly) famous for her classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee's newest book, Go Set a Watchman, caused quite a media frenzy even before its publication. This text examines how Lee s Southern background (she was a descendant of General Robert E. Lee) and racial tensions in the Deep South during that time came together to influence the plot, characters, and themes of To Kill a Mockingbird. This volume also explores the history of Go Set a Watchman and the controversy surrounding it, comparing its themes and structure with Lee's beloved classic.
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
In the mid-1950s, twenty-six-year-old Jean Louis Finch, "Scout," returns to Maycomb, Alabama, to visit her father, Atticus, but her homecoming turns bittersweet and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt as she uncovers truths about her family, friends, and town which are exposed by civil rights tensions and political turmoil.
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Also available on Sora
Black Birds in the Sky by Brandy Colbert
In the early morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob marched across the train tracks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and into its predominantly Black Greenwood District--a thriving, affluent neighborhood known as America's Black Wall Street. They brought with them firearms, gasoline, and explosives. In a few short hours, they'd razed thirty-five square blocks to the ground, leaving hundreds dead. The Tulsa Race Massacre is one of the most devastating acts of racial violence in US history. But how did it come to pass? What exactly happened? And why are the events unknown to so many of us today? These are the questions that . . . author Brandy Colbert seeks to answer in this . . . nonfiction account of the Tulsa Race Massacre
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Also available on Sora
