Featured Reviews of “One Child Reading”

“The habit of reading is most frequently acquired in childhood: it is as children that we first acquire our love of losing ourselves in other worlds and other lives, and our imaginative capacity to respond emotionally to the abstract symbols that make up a text-based narrative. .. [In Margaret Mackey’s] new volume, she turns inward to recall her own formative experiences as a child reader growing up in Newfoundland during the 1950s and ’60s.” Quill & Quire


“One Child Reading, in which a professor becomes a geographer of her own literacy, is hyper-local, yet there’s something about the way Margaret Mackey describes the forces that affected her early reading as a white, middle-class girl in 1950s and 60s St. John’s that will speak to readers across identity lines…. [T]his book marks an expert in her field bringing a career’s worth of knowledge to material she knows best. A thorough and lucid examination of the self, aided by prolific illustrations and great page design. Jade Colbert, The Globe and Mail


“One Child Reading [is] the remarkable Margaret Mackey’s exhaustive but far from exhausting study of the development of literacy.” Peter Hunt, Archive Child blog [Full blog post at http://bit.ly/2aecVwx]


“I know that One Child Reading is meant to be more than just a walk down memory lane, and it is much more than that, most certainly. And yet, while I know that scholarship and literacy will be richer for the extensive and careful research represented here, I still want to thank Ms. Mackey for taking me on that walk. It was a pure pleasure. I will recommend this book highly, and not just for library collections, but for any child of the fifties who loves books and reading.” Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER


The introduction at the Edmonton launch read like a review, too.