"Go on, George! Tell about what we're gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in the cages and about the rain in the winter and the stove, and how thick the cream is on the milk like you can hardly cut it. Tell about that, George."

An ode to the power of true friendship, and what it means to choose your own family, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men follows the story of two misfits trying to carve out a spot for themselves in a world that doesn't want them. George and Lennie are two migrant workers, making their way across California in search of a better life during the Great Depression.

Finding work on a vegetable farm, George struggles to keep an eye on simple-minded Lennie, a gentle giant who doesn't know his own strength. When the wife of the Boss's son starts flirting with Lennie, it sets off a chain of events that ends in tragedy. Praised by critics and banned by schools, the novella sits in fourth place on the ALA's list of Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century.

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