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The Help KATHRYN STOCKETT Penguin Group USA

Table of Contents

Copyright Page Dedication AIBILEEN chapter 1 - August 1962 chapter 2 MINNY chapter 3

chapter 4 MISS SKEETER chapter 5 chapter 6 AIBILEEN chapter 7 MISS SKEETER chapter 8 chapter 9 MINNY chapter 10 MISS SKEETER chapter 11 chapter 12 chapter 13 AIBILEEN chapter 14 chapter 15 chapter 16 MINNY chapter 17 chapter 18 MISS SKEETERchapter 19 chapter 20 chapter 21 AIBILEEN chapter 22 chapter 23 MINNY chapter 24 THE BENEFIT chapter 25 MINNY chapter 26 MISS SKEETER chapter 27 chapter 28

AIBILEEN chapter 29 MINNY chapter 30 AIBILEEN chapter 31 MINNY chapter 32 MISS SKEETER chapter 33 AIBILEEN chapter 34 Acknowledgements TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AMY EINHORN BOOKS Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons PublishersSince 1838 Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) PenguinGroup (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

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First published in the United States by Amy Einhorn Books, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Copyright © 2009 by Kathryn Stockett All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do notparticipate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the U.S. Library of Congress.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are usedfictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisherdoes not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. eISBN : 978-1-440-69763-0 http://us.penguingroup.com

To Grandaddy Stockett, the best storyteller of all

AIBILEEN

chapter 1 August 1962 MAE MOBLEY was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that’swhat I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning. But I ain’t never seen a baby yell like Mae Mobley Leefolt. First day I walk in the door, there she be, red-hot and hollering with the colic, fighting that bottlelike it’s a rotten turnip. Miss Leefolt, she look terrified a her own child. “What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I stop it?” It? That was my first hint: something is wrong with this situation. So I took that pink, screaming baby in my arms. Bounced her on my hip to get the gas moving and it didn’t take two minutes fore Baby Girl stopped her crying, got to smiling up at me like she do. But Miss...