Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the fictional town of Maycomb County,
Alabama. Harper Lee fills the book with descriptions of locations of important places in
Maycomb County.
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Copy of book To Kill a Mockingbird
Pencil
Notepad or computer (Use Writer’s Notebook for rough draft)
Long rectangular sheet of paper for Part I and Part II
Instructions
Part I—“The Neighborhood”
Sketch the Finch neighborhood as we progress through the novel. Find descriptive
examples from each chapter that provide the reader with a visual of the neighborhood.
While you are reading each chapter, use a pencil to mark passages that talk about a
location in the neighborhood. Keep a running list of the locations and the quotes that
describes the locations in the neighborhood. Here are descriptors from the first six
chapters. Sketch a rough draft of the Finch’s neighborhood based on the examples
below.
Sketch out your map in pencil first so you can get it just right before making the final
map of the neighborhood. Remember, the locations are relative so draw the houses or
buildings that you are sure of and fill in the rest later. Remember to include streets and
any other features that will enhance the map.
Leave space for captions, thought bubbles, symbols, and stick figures. This should be a
creative endeavor.
Chapter One
We lived on the main residential street in town…
Our summertime boundaries were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house two doors to the north
of us, and the Radley place three doors to the south.
The Radley place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house. Walking south, one faced its
porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot.
Dill was next door in Miss Rachel Haverford’s collard patch.
Chapter Two
Hours of wintertime had found me in the tree house, looking over at the schoolyard…through a
two-power telescope…”
…for as we trotted around the corner past the Radley place…
Miss Caroline boarded across the street one door down from us in Miss Maudie Atkinson’s
upstairs front room…
Chapter 4
Two live oaks stood at the edge of the Radley property; their roots reached out into the side road
and made it bumpy.
Cecil Jacobs, who lived at the far end of our street next door to the post office, walked a total of
one mile per school day to avoid the Radley place and old Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose.
Mrs. Dubose lived two doors up the street from us…
Mr. Nathan Radley passed us on his daily trips to town…
Dill remained at the light pole on the front center of the lot, and Jem and I edged down the
sidewalk parallel to the side of the house. I walked beyond Jem and stood where I could see
around the curve.
Chapter 5
Our tacit treaty with Miss Maudie was that we could play on her lawn, eat her scuppernongs if
we didn’t jump on her arbor, and explore her vast back lot…
Chapter 6
We leaped over the low wall that separated Miss Rachel’s yard from our driveway…
He pointed to the east. A gigantic moon was rising behind Miss Maudie’s pecan trees.
Mr. Avery boarded across the street from Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house.
We thought it was better to go under the high wire fence at the rear of the Radley lot…The fence
enclosed a large garden and a narrow wooden outhouse.
We came to the gate that divided the garden from the backyard.
The back of the Radley house was less inviting than the front: a ramshackle porch ran the width
of the house; there were two doors and two dark windows between the doors.
Fence by the schoolyard!...Dill and I rolled through and were halfway to the shelter of the
school yard’s solitary oak when we sensed Jem was not with us.
We ran across the schoolyard, crawled under the fence to Deer’s Pasture behind our house,
climbed our back fence, and were at the back steps…
“We were playin’ strip poker up yonder by the fish pool…”