"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy... but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the perennial classic, and personal favorite, To Kill a Mockingbird. The infamously reclusive Harper Lee broke her silence in honor of the landmark in an interview with Allison Flood of The Guardian (there is also this cool quiz-give it a try: I scored an underwhelming 7/10).

Never missing a beat, the Huffington Post today included a piece on Scout authored by Anna Quindlen which is an excerpt from Mary McDonagh Murphy's Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of to Kill a Mockingbird.



Additionally, there have been several new, beautiful reissued covers.

"The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature."

"Remarkable triumph . . . Miss Lee writes with a wry compassion that makes her novel soar."
-Life magazine

"Miss Lee wonderfully builds the tranquil atmosphere of her Southern town, and as adroitly causes it to erupt a shocking lava of emotions."
-San Francisco Examiner

"Marvelous . . . Miss Lee's original characters are people to cherish in this winning first novel."
-The New York Times

"A novel of great sweetness, humor, compassion, and of mystery carefully sustained."
-Harper's Magazine

"Skilled, unpretentious and tototally ingenuous . . . tough, melodramatic, acute, funny."
-The New Yorker