“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