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=//The Help// by Kathryn Stockett=



It's 1962 in Mississippi, and twenty-two year old Skeeter has returned from Ole Miss. Even with a degree, Skeeter's mother won't be happy until she has a ring on her finger. Skeeter, however, has other ideas. She wants to write--something important--and make her splash in the publishing world. Her dead-end job as the writer of the cleaning and housekeeping column at her local newspaper isn't exactly what she had in mind. She stumbles across what may be her path to true authorship when she decides to write a book from the perspectibe of "the help," all of the maids in the local community. With help from maids Aibileen and Minny, the three women become a part of a movement so poignant, funny, and heartbreaking, it will put them all at risk and push all the lines in their town.

Stockett's book explores racial tensions and prejudice in a town of debutantes and gentlemen, where nothing is as it seems on the outside. She masterfully weaves the story of three very different women into a narrative about tolerance, love, and acceptance of yourself and others. Many have called the book this generation's //To Kill A Mockingbird.// While it hods many of the same lessons and themes, it tells the story from dramatically different points of view and thirty years down the road from Scout's own tale.

[|Kathryn Stockett] graduated from the University of Alabama and worked in magazine publishing while living in New York. The Help, which debuted in 2009, is her first novel.

In 2011, Stockett's novel was adapted into the highly successful, Oscar winning film bearing the same name. Students who are interested in the book may want to watch the movie and compare the two. Below is the trailer.

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