To Kill a Mockingbird is a … successful piece of work. It is frankly and completely impossible, being told in the first person by a six-year-old girl with the prose style of a well-educated adult. Miss Lee has to be sure, made an attempt to confine the information in the text to what Scout would actually know, but it is no more than a casual gesture toward plausibility…. What happens [in the story] is … never seen directly by the narrator. The surface of the story is an Alcottish filigree of games, mischief, squabbles with an older brother, troubles at school, and the like. (p. 98)
A variety of adults, mostly eccentric in Scout's judgment, and a continual bubble of incident make To Kill a Mockingbird pleasant, undemanding reading. (pp. 98-9)
Phoebe Adams, in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1960 by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass.; reprinted with permission), August, 1960.
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