What is the impact on a community where a school shooting occurs? Kathryn Erskine acknowledged that she wrote Mockingbird as a response to the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech University, just a few miles from where Erskine lives. Research that school shooting, including the statements from survivors and from the families of those who died, and discuss it in the context of Caitlin’s search for closure.

Caitlin is a first-person narrator. How does her narration reveal aspects of Asperger’s? How does that formal device influence the novel’s themes? Is the novel more about a school shooting or Asperger’s?

Josh is perhaps the novel’s most complicated character. He is a bully, but in his own way he is a victim of the school shooting. Using the two scenes on the playground and Michael’s evolving friendship with him, describe and analyze Josh’s character.