The Help

I've read Kathryn Stockett's novel The Help a couple times, most recently aloud to my thirteen year old son. He had wanted to see the movie and I had suggested we try to read the book first. I told him if he didn't like it we'd just watch the movie but by the end of the first chapter he was hooked. It's been a long time since I read a book to him, mostly because he hasn't seemed to enjoy it. But with The Help, he was asking if we could read. It was nice to see him so excited about a book.

Most people have at least heard of The Help if not read it. It's immense popularity only intensified when the movie came out. The novel is narrated by three women in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s-- a white woman and two black maids. The three women eventually come together in an attempt to change the ill treatment of blacks. There is good reason for the book's popularity, the novel is readable and tells a great heartwarming/ wrenching story. Yet it's also received some (deserved) criticism. One of the complaints I had heard against the book was the horrible dialect that it's written in. As I read the book aloud I found myself cringing at the way that Stockett wrote the black women's chapters and juxtaposed next to (white) Skeeter's chapters it is a wonder that an editor didn't pick that up. I couldn't read the dialect because it was so uncomfortable to me, the way it seemed stereotypical, even a little racist. I changed words to make it sound more like Skeeter's chapters were written. All and all though it is a good story and I'm glad I thought to read it to Isaac since he is now saying that it's his favorite book.