Remember when you were little and you had a favorite picture book that you asked everyone – mom, dad, grandparents – to read to you? How many times was that book read to you? I bet I have read To Kill a Mockingbird that many times.

I began to re-read TKAM again last week, and as always, I felt like I was welcoming an old friend back into my life. I know this book so well, and yet it gives me something new every time I read it. Students’ insights into the book also give me a fresh perspective on the book each year. (See the Student Zone of our Mind Candy student blog for their thinking about TKAM.)

Yet there are questions I ask every time I read it that I never quite get answered: What are “Big Mules,” who was “Lorenzo Dow,” and is the Gray Ghost a real book or something that sounds real that Harper Lee made up? No matter. These details add resonance to the story but you don’t need to know all the answers to follow the plot.

Are there stories you like to re-read? Why do we enjoy reading things over and over? Have you ever re-read something and not enjoyed it as much as you recalled? I’d love to hear about your experiences with re-reading.