In ‘‘The Lesson,’’ another tale from the collection Gorilla, My Love, a Harlem community worker delivers a stark lesson in inequality to neighborhood children by taking them on a trip to the pricey F.A.O. Schwarz toy store in midtown Manhattan.

Paule Marshall’s novel Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959) tells the story of a girl’s journey into young womanhood in a Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood inhabited by Barbadian immigrants.

Sherley A. Williams offers a critical examination of African American heroes in literature from the nineteenth century to the 1960s in her book Give Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study in Neo-Black Literature (1972), focusing on what she terms ‘‘neo-black literature.’’

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), a novel by Mark Twain, is an American classic about a white boy and a runaway slave who embark on a journey down the Mississippi River. Like Hazel, Huck narrates his own story and learns about family, friendship, trust, and human dignity.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (1997), by J.K. Rowling, is a captivating and humorous novel about an eleven-year-old boy who discovers he is a wizard and is destined to confront magical forces.