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To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

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Student Question

In which chapters does Atticus Finch read to Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Quick answer:

Atticus Finch reads to Scout in chapters two, three, 26, and 31. In chapter two, Scout recalls sitting on her father's lap as he reads. In chapter three, they agree to continue reading together secretly. In chapter 26, Scout seeks comfort from Atticus while he reads. Finally, in chapter 31, Atticus reads The Gray Ghost to Scout as she falls asleep.

Expert Answers

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Atticus comes home after working all day, eats dinner, and then reads for the rest of the evening. As a little girl, Scout loves to sit on her father's lap and read along with him. Jem even proudly tells Dill that Scout has been reading since she was born. This is probably because she sits on her father's lap each night while he reads. She gets in trouble, though, for knowing how to read on her first day of first grade. Her teacher, Miss Caroline, tells her to stop reading with her father! This gets Scout thinking about how she actually came to read. In chapter two she reminisces:

"I could not remember when the lines above Atticus's moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory . . . anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night" (18).

In chapter three, Scout discusses her problem with Miss Caroline with Atticus. They come to the decision to keep reading together and not to tell her teacher they're doing it. At the end of this chapter, she winds up back on her father's lap, reading the newspaper with him.

After having a fight with her brother in chapter 26, Scout skulks back to her father to lick her wounds. It's evening, he's reading, and she tries to get into his lap, but he says, "You're getting so big now, I'll just have to hold a part of you" (247).

Finally, in chapter 31, Atticus puts Scout to bed as he reads to her The Gray Ghost. By this time, she's a couple of years older than in the first few chapters of the book, and she understands a lot more about life, reading, and growing up. As she drifts off to sleep, she's telling Atticus about the moral of the story—practically telling him the story rather than him reading it!

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