The innocent childhood game that tumbles into something adult and serious is a fairly common theme in fiction, but I have not for some time seen the idea used so forcefully as in To Kill a Mockingbird…. The game is 'Making Boo come out' which the children of a Southern lawyer play outside the old home of a family of foot-washing Baptists where, according to one among many legends, Boo Radley has been kept chained up for years and years for stabbing his father with the scissors. Pretty soon we are in the adult game, based on the same fear and fascination of the dark: the ugliness and violence of a Negro's trial for rape and the town's opposition to the children's father for defending him. Miss Lee does well what so many American writers do appallingly: she paints a true and lively picture of life in an American small town. And she gives freshness to a stock situation. (p. 580)

To Kill a Mockingbird … [is] laden with well-deserved praise. In situation and tone it has something in common with [Carson McCullers'] The Member of the Wedding, though its development and its atmosphere are more commonplace…. The early parts of the book are pure delight. Miss Lee excels in recapturing her childhood, and the children she writes about are worth knowing….

[When a negro is accused of raping a white girl,] Scout's father undertakes the defence, and the novel thereafter runs the way of its many predecessors. But the plot is well constructed, the tone of the opening preserved to the end, and the message one that can stand repetition. (p. 697)

The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1960; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), October 28, 1960.