Rarely have I been more moved by a story [The Stone Book] and the telling of it. To hold a class—any age—absolutely spellbound you read the passage where Mary climbs the church steeple to the top where her father, a stonemason, sets the weathercock and she swings round on it. Mary's lesson lies under the landscape she sees from the spire, in the stone quarry. She learns from men moulded by their craft. The language is like the theme, hewn out of the wisdom of use. A quite remarkable book….

Margaret Meek, "Seven to Eleven: 'The Stone Book'," in The School Librarian, Vol. 25, No. 3, September, 1977, p. 241.