Now, a Literary Moment...

Harper Lee published the timeless classic, To Kill A Mockingbird in 1960; her only novel to date. Since then, we know very little about the author as she's chosen to remain outside the public eye. But one need only look at scout, the novel's precocious tomboy, to see what Harper Lee was like as a young girl.

Charles Shields: She was a non-conformist from the time she was very small. Her fourth grade teacher was shocked on one of the very first days of school when Harper called her by her first name. And when she was upbraided about it, Lee said, 'I call my father by his first name.' She never dropped that aspect of being a square peg in a round hole. And in that regard, she's very similar to Scout in the novel. Scout is Harper Lee to a T.

This Literary Moment was created by the National Endowment for the Arts