".at its best, lucid and unassuming writing delivers thoughtful, intelligent content is ultimately the purpose of reading. This is what Trevor Newland does in The Atheneum, a stylishly illustrated and extraordinarily intelligent work of Children's Literature that really is, as the biographical page indicates, a story "for young AND old people . All of this is to say that if I were a young reader I'd be drawn to Newland's enigmatic illustrations because they communicate the power of the written word--and drawn picture--to transport us, by the seeming magic medium of reading, to an unbounded world of the imagination. Isn't that exactly what younger readers crave? . I'm an older reader, however, and what I found remarkable about The Atheneum is the simple premise underlying Jack's quest, which is that our sense of identity--our "voice"--is not something inside of us just waiting to be released but is to a great extent the effect of reading." -- Peter Babiak, The British Columbia Review.