My thoughts on the book to kill a mockingbird

Throughout my reading of the book 'To Kill a Mockingbird', I have encountered many things; most of which have to do with how the main characters start to grow up and how they leave their childhood. But I have also noticed that as time passes by, Scout, the main character, starts to go through hard times as she is forced to see her naive ways and her view of the world changes for good. One of the views that I speak of is her constant mistake of stereotyping.
    We find in the earlier chapters of the book that Scout has a tendency to judge people before she really knows them. An example of her stereotyping was found in the first chapter when Jem and Scout where explaining to their friend, Dill, the things they had heard about Boo, (Arthur Radley) "Jem received most of his information from Miss Stephanie Crawford, a neighborhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing. According to Miss Stephanie, Boo was sitting in the livingroom cutting some items from The Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr. Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities."  This tells us that Scout and her brother Jem do not always think about what is really the truth because of all the things they had heard from someone else. So they judged Boo without even knowing him.
     In the last few chapters, Scout encounters trials in her life and learns many lessons about stereotyping and how it is best to avoid such things. As her views on people begin to change, Scout realizes that half the things she thought about those people were not true, thus she comes to understanding how child like and wrong she had been. An example of Scout realizing how wrong her judgments are was when Scout met Walter Cunningham. At first she thought he was just someone who could not keep himself clean or pass the first grade, but she soon comes to terms that he really is not like that at all, he is a good boy and very polite to other people.
    'To Kill a Mockingbird', is more than just a story, it teaches you how things are in life and that we should not judge those things without knowing the real story behind them; I think that out of all the books I have read, this book would have to be my favorite for that very reason.