The following pages consist of teacher’s notes and classroom support sheets for To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. These resources are to help students who are studying To Kill a Mockingbird as part of the AQA GCSE English Literature specification. These pages can be freely downloaded and printed out as required.

 

Once upon a time there was a Queen who had a beautiful baby daughter. She asked all the fairies in the kingdom to the christening, but unfortunately forgot to invite one of them, who was a bit of a witch as well. She came anyway, but as she passed the baby's cradle, she said:

"When you are sixteen, you will injure yourself with a spindle and die!"

 Sleeping Beauty ("La Belle au Bois dormant" (The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood)) is a fairy tale classic, the first in the set published in 1697 by Charles Perrault. The tale has been interpreted as a myth of natural phenomena, especially in light of the names given Sleeping Beauty's children: Sun and Moon, Dawn and Day, are easily interpreted as figurative characters.

Some folklorists have analyzed Sleeping Beauty as indicating the replacement of the lunar year (with its thirteen months, symbolically depicted by the full thirteen fairies) by the solar year (which has twelve, symbolically the invited fairies). This, however, founders on the issue that only in the Grimms' tale is the wicked fairy the thirteenth fairy; in Perrault's, she is the eighth