To Kill a Mockingbird graphic novel ‘a cultural event’
British artist is quick to point out his effort no substitute for the original
Reading To Kill a Mockingbird has been a rite of passage for more than half a century, and the novel has been credited with awakening thousands of teenagers to the rewards of literature. Now, the classic portrayal of racial injustice and loss of innocence in America’s Deep South is being brought to a new generation in the form of a graphic novel.
Instead of devouring Harper Lee’s humorous and astute child’s eye prose, readers can follow the tale of Scout, Jem, Boo Radley and Atticus Finch through 260 pages of richly drawn cartoons with speech bubbles.
But the British artist who has adapted the famous book has a clear message for young readers: it’s no substitute for the original.
Fred Fordham admits that when he was approached amid a “spy novel atmosphere” of secrecy to adapt the great work in 2016, it was “pretty daunting.”
“It’s almost considered more than a novel — it’s a cultural event,” he said.
A 10-day trip to Monroeville, Lee’s Alabama hometown on which she based the fictional Maycomb of the book, the warm endorsement of the Lee estate plus the novel’s strength of dialogue soon convinced him a meaningful adaptation was possible.
But he said the new graphic version, published in the U.K. by Random House, should not be seen by young readers as a lightweight alternative to reading the full text.
“I read it at school and then again at university,” he said.
“To try and do a graphic adaptation of something solely to make it easier to read is almost certainly going to do a disservice to the original novel, and it does also to the graphic novel too, in a way, because it’s treating it as kind of kid gloves version.
“This should be read as well as, not instead of.”
Despite the reservations of many in the literary establishment, graphic adaptations are becoming ever more mainstream.
From a Marvel comic version of Pride and Prejudice by Hugo Petrus to a Peter Kuper graphic take on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the medium is growing in prominence, with increasing numbers of readers.
But To Kill a Mockingbird’s troubling plot, which sees a black man, Tom Robinson, wrongly accused and convicted of raping a white woman, presented particular challenges.
“The themes, of course, are excruciating; you have to be very careful not to flinch from that,” Fordham said.
The original novel still sells more than a million copies around the world each year, and since its 1960 publication has been translated into more than 40 languages.