The Help by Kathryn Stockett

AUDIOBOOK
The Help
UNABRIDGED

By Kathryn Stockett
Narrated by Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer, Cassandra Campbell
Length:18 hrs and 19 mins
Release Date:01-28-09




Many books take on the days of the civil rights movement in the south, but none quite like The Help by Kathryn Stockett. This book is written from not only the perspective of the people who had help, but from the perspective of the help themselves. While I was not born nor raised in this day and age, but a whole generation later, this era has always held my imagination hostage as it is truly a world of black and white, north and south.

I always grew up believing that this was a simpler time, that I would have loved to have grown up in, because I grew up in the north and the amount of separation leveled in the south during the civil rights days had been changed many years before during the civil war according to our history books as well as the culture. The Help shows how the south was very different from the north by allowing the reader to become engrossed in the story from the southern black perspective while having a northern character from New York City in the publisher who states that she would be willing to look over the manuscript put together by the brave women who told their stories.

even though this book is fiction, it could as easily be non fiction and depict any city in any southern state below the Mason Dixon Line. In studying the Jim Crowe South, this would be a great book of reference to give children the feeling of that era.

The Help is on its way to theater's this August (I for one cannot wait). This is the book that introduced me to Jenna Lamia a wonderful Narrator who has also Narrated Saving Ceecee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman as well as The secret Life of bee's , Velva Jean Learns to Drive By Jennifer Niven, The Kitchen House By Kathleen Grissom, and Firefly Cloak By Sheri Reynolds.

If you plan on visiting the theatre to see The Help I recomend reading the book first, thought I have heard that many of the audible narrators will be within the cast of the movie, I know that the book is always better than the movie, considering the book was 10 hours long and there is much cut out to fit into movie format.

You cannot go wrong with any of the books I have mentioned in this post, but my two top favorites are The Help and Saving Ceecee Honeycutt.

I also recommend trying the audible versions as they sweep you away into the time the stories are written about, nearly so much that you can smell the honeysuckle and magnolia blooms.

~Happy Reading Folks!