It helped so much to read this simultaneously with the book. I felt I was getting a much deeper experience because Castleman pointed out some major themes of the book that I wasn't noticing, i.e., bravery, education vs school, trust, gender, honesty vs lies. I was so busy reading the details that I wasn't thinking of these things.
When fall comes, Scout enters the first grade. Because she has already taught herself how to read and write, Scout finds school a disappointment. Both she and Jem are intrigued, however, by the discovery that someone has been leaving small gifts in a knothole in one of the large oak trees on the corner of the Radley property.