George McMichael of the San Francisco Chronicle said in his July 1960 review that “Mockingbird” was a “moving plea for tolerance,” despite some occasional melodramatic moments.

“Best of all, Harper Lee has wisely and effectively employed the piercing accuracy of a child’s unalloyed vision of the adult world, to display the workings of a tragedy-laden region that little understands itself—or rarely seeks to,” McMichael wrote.