We [teachers] might have missed the point about William Mayne…. You have to walk into one of his books sideways—it's an excellent exercise in being a crab, right down to having your eyes on stalks. The books he writes are mysterious, oblique books, the relief of reading which lies in the holiday they give you from the common effort in which we are normally engaged to make a sort of stodgy continuity out of the events and ideas and perceptions in which we are involved. William Mayne I think is one of the few pure wits who have ever written for children. We should be careful about analyzing and using such work until the excitement and delight of it are dispersed. (p. 66)

The special features of Mr. William Mayne's enthralling talent sometimes distract attention from those features of it which link him with the most famous and gifted children's authors of the past. There is, for example, the way in which the outline structure of his plots—triumphantly disguised with a daunting ingenuity—is fundamentally uncomplicated and traditional at heart. There is the repeated use of the convention of tireless daring and resourcefulness in children, often used to outwit (though gently) the intentions of their undiscerning elders; the originality of the means and the deep understanding of relationships between generations serve to mask it. And least noticeable of all, perhaps, is a pervading moral emphasis—worked out through detail and by means of implication rather than proffered by generalization and stark obviousness.

This last feature appears in Ravensgill in its usual painstakingly subtle form. Mr. Mayne's greatest gift is his ability to inhabit the moment-to-moment consciousness of the young, remember and understand their confusions, register in an elegantly precise prose narrative and dialogue their partial and yet illuminating sense of the world of objects and people, and enter into their games of perception. It follows, but almost imperceptibly, that the most sensitive are the most virtuous and that the reward of virtue—almost invariably allied, inseparably, with moral strengths like courage and persistence—is triumph. But one notable mark of his originality is that the process of winning is frequently a process also of achieving understanding. The two main child characters in his new novel work away at the mystery which grips and bewilders them, until they solve it in a way which yields a moving comprehension of adult values, rituals and obsessions….

Underneath, but far underneath, the surface, the elements are traditional and familiar. But the skill with which they are re-shuffled and re-interpreted makes Ravensgill a solidly original achievement, even if it does not represent Mr. Mayne at his arresting and alarming best.

As always, his sense of setting and his perception of the interrelation of people and places are remarkable…. [The] values of old and young are set beautifully and discerningly at odds. No one senses and portrays these shifts and changes more accurately than Mr. Mayne. No one now writes with more knowledge of, and compassion for, people in all their roles. And no one contributes more through sheer sensitivity and virtuosity of style and treatment to our increasing realization of children's fiction as an art in its own right.