Harper Lee makes print appearance

Lee has published no new fiction since To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee, the reclusive US author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has written a rare published piece - a letter to a magazine about reading as a child.

She tells O, The Oprah Magazine, that in her Depression-era Alabama village "youngsters had little to do but read".

The 80-year-old adds that in today's society "where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books".

To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee's only novel, won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize.

Some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal Harper Lee

Lee tells a special summer reading issue of Oprah Winfrey's magazine that she must have learned to read from being read to by her family.

She says her older brother and sisters read aloud to stop Lee annoying them.

Her mother also read her a story every day and her father read from the four newspapers he went through each evening, she says.

Lee's letter also asks: "And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer?

"Some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal."