Those of you who actually read your high school literature assignments should remember that Atticus Finch is the dignified Southern lawyer who defends a black man wrongly accused of rape in Harper Lee's Pulitzer prize-winning 1969 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Set in 1935 Alabama, three children face the life lessons of good and evil and the power of convictions when small-town attorney Atticus Finch agrees to defend a black man charged with attacking a white teen-ager. It has been a staple of high-school literature classes for a generation for two reasons: It celebrates values we'd like to give to children, and all its meaning lies on or near the surface. One of the reasons we love this story is that it forces its audience to recognize that children may miss some of the technicalities of a situation, but they do not miss the emotions that accompany them. While the adult world overlooks the Boo Radley house, the children are focused on revealing its mystery.  And not without result. They begin to find shiny Indian-head pennies and sticks of chewing gum hidden in the knots of an old tree. Childhood ambition and curiosity bring forth the otherwise impossible by simply letting Radley know that someone was attempting to understand him. Tacoma Little Theatre brings the literary classic to life, opening the stage version Friday for a two-week run.

Read Christian Carvajal's review of To Kill a Mockingbird in the Music & Culture section.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through Feb. 9, Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 N. I St., Tacoma, $15-$22, 253.272.2281