Thursday, August 15, 2013

The Help - Kathryn Stockett


The Help
By Kathryn Stockett
★★★★★


Summary
Miss Skeeter is an independent thinking, Ole’ Miss college graduate.  She is a reporter and wanted to do more than write a help column for people looking for cleaning advice.  Skeeter decides to secretly write a book about “the Help”, black women working for white women, in the 1960’s, in the south.

Aibileen and Minny are two of the women who tell their stories and help Miss Skeeter write the book in private.  The stories range from daily cleaning and childcare to the once in a lifetime stories you just have to read about.  The friendship that develops between these women is unconventional for the time, but has a great sincerity from all participants.   

Review
The craftsmanship is great, and the voice and dialect changes when the story is told from the perspective of Minny, Aibileen or Miss Skeeter.  This is a fictional book, inspired by the author’s personal experiences and research, but each piece of the story could have been true on it’s own. 

This is a humorous book that made me laugh out loud on several occasions.  The book tells it how it was, with a constant leaning toward the better times to come.  While this book was probably not written for school aged children, I believe that middle school and high school students would get a lot out of reading this book.  It puts the Civil Rights movement in a much more relatable light than the Martin Luther King Jr. Day activities that are usually observed in schools. 

Author Website

I did not find her website very helpful, there were a few “no brainer” discussion questions, but mostly it served as a promotional tool.

Technical Stuff
Paperback: 544 pages
Publisher: Berkley Trade; Mti Rei edition (June 28, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0425245136
ISBN-13: 978-0425245132
Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars