pthow Ithaca, NY, USA

I won't comment on the book's message, except to say that people worldwide today can still use a lesson or two on accepting other people who are different from themselves.

Read the book, not for your school reading assignment but for the sake of reading, and you will understand what Harper Lee had to say.

Equally brilliant but easily overlooked when reviewing this book is the writing, the language if you will, Harper Lee employed to construct the world of Scout.

Yes, she constructed not only a story, not only a series of events, but an entire world as seen by a child growing up in Maycomb during the 30's.

Not much of a writer myself, but I write novels on and off. And I believe in a minimalistic approach: the less you say that's unrelated to your main story line, the better. Don't waste two chapters on developments that can be summed up in two paragraphs.

And we see a fine counterexample in "Mockingbrid".

Reading the opening pages, you will find no trace of the theme advertised on the back cover: "a lawyer in the deep south defending a black man charged with the rape of a white girl." Instead, it is as if you can breath the hot summer's air, while running around in the yard as a seven-year-old.

Those big houses, you have in fact never set foot in one, and have only seen them on American TV shows such as Knight Rider. And back then you were in the living room of some apartment building in some Asian city. But the fact doesn't stop you from feeling that world of Scout.

And that's what drew me into the book. Not the message of acceptance and equality; not the social or historical value of the book. It's because I can feel so vividly another time, another age, another world all together. I can almost touch it if I just reach out, or it seems.

Harper Lee maintained the same touch throughout the book. This is not a story about the trial and the aftermath, but an account of Scout's childhood through her own eyes, with the trial standing out as one big event.

I don't think I can spell out my thought very clearly. What I mean to say is, it is so near-impossible to keep your focus while detailing on everything big and small. I certainly can't, and many published writers failed at one point or another at achieving the right balance.

Yet Harper Lee did it-- not a "balance" between the two, which implies some sort of deliberate exclusion. She maxed out both sides.

Pure genius. Something we can only admire and not copy. We are really not created equal in this case, and what can I say?

Amy Tan was born in America. She grew up in America. She writes in English.

I was born in Malaysia. I grew up in Taiwan. Mandarin is my native tongue.

So I the reason I got this book wasn't because I wanted to read about China or the Chinese people, but because I wanted to read about Chinese people in America.

To be fair, Amy Tan is brilliant for this part. But she instead chose to spend much more effort on the China portion of the story, something she doesn't have firsthand. And, alas, she failed as a consequence.