"To Kill a Mockingbird" wins Literary Smackdown
August 19, 2013
In the final Literary Smackdown of the summer, "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee beat "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank to be named the most influential book in Marathon County.
More than 100 people voted for Lee's classic novel of a young girl embroiled in a bitter war of race in violence in 1930s Alabama, compared to more than 50 people who voted for Anne Frank's diary of her time in hiding from the Nazis in World War II.
The MCPL Literary Smackdown began in June and pitted eight fiction books against eight nonfiction books in a March madness-style competition with library patrons voting for their favorite books in weekly pairings. Other books in the Smackdown include "Jane Eyre," "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," "1984," "The Prince," "Fahrenheit 451" and "Silent Spring."