"That rare literary phenomenon, a Southern novel with no mildew on its magnolia leaves. Funny, happy and written with unspectacular precision, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is about conscience--how it is instilled in two children, Scout and Jem Finch; how it operates in their father, Atticus a lawyer appointed to defend a Negro on a rape charge, and how conscience crows in their small Alabama town." -- "Vogue""All of the tactile brilliance and none of the precocity generally supposed to be standard swamp-warfare issues for Southern writers...Novelist Lee's prose has an edge that cuts through cant, and she teaches the reader an astonishing number of use truths about little girls and about Southern life...Scout Finch is fiction's most pealing child since Carson McCullers's Frankie got left behind at the wedding."--" Time""A first novel of such rare excellence that it will no doubt make a great many readers slow down to relish more fully its simple distinction...A novel of strong contemporary national significance." --" Chicago Tribune"