Coming of age comes with an inevitable end of childhood innocence, without which graduation into maturity cannot truly take place. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Jem, a ten-year-old boy, and Scout, a six-year-old girl, two children who live in the southern town Maycomb, Alabama, are shown in their adventures that help them mature. During the years of the Great Depression - the years when this novel is set - racism had been an attitude many southerners followed. Atticus, Jem and Scout's father and also a respected lawyer, is appointed to take part in a controversial trial: he is to defend Tom Robinson, a poor negro laborer charged with raping Mayella Ewell, the nineteen year old daughter of the impoverished Bob Ewell. Jem and Scout are shown going through a tremendous amount of growing up in this novel - not only physically, but also emotionally, mentally, and morally. The children learn more about the real world in brushes with the outside world, such as at school. They are also intrigued by their mysterious neighbor Boo Radley, who had been locked up in his house for a petty crime as a teenager, as he had not been outside his house for decades. Arthur "Boo" Radley is an object of great wonder and speculation for the children, who imagine him to be a savage. They have many opportunities for life lessons in observations of their neighbors like the kindly Miss Maudie, a confidante for the children, and the mean old Mrs. Dubose, imagined to be the meanest person alive. Jem and Scout gain much insight into the workings of the society in which they live through Tom Robinson's trial, and ultimately shed their childhood innocence at that point.

When Dill Harris, a little boy only a year older than Scout, comes to Maycomb, Jem, Scout and Dill indulge in play together, enacting scenes from Tarzan, Tom Swift and such, until "by the end of August, [their]