Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this eighth and final volume in his Pulitzer Prize­winning Children of Crisis series, Coles examines the religious and spiritual lives of children. By using children's own words and pictures, Coles presents their deepest feelings.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Pulitzer prize-winning Harvard child psychiatrist Coles, a social scientist and prolific writer of books dealing with children's perceptions of poverty, moral and political stress, and crisis, shares his research regarding children's understanding of and reflections on spiritual matters. Inspired by his psychoanalytic training and a conversation with Anna Freud, Coles interviewed in-depth over 500 Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and agnostic children, ages eight to 12, living in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. What Cole delivers, in between thoughtful but nonjargonistic explanations of children's remarks and art work, are detailed, fascinating conversations between an expert interviewer and children struggling to understand God and the contradictions of their religious teachings. Recommended for larger public and college library collections and church/synagogue libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/90.--Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

With his Children of Crisis series, begun nearly 30 years ago, and later studies about children's moral and political lives, Coles, child psychiatrist, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and Harvard professor, has taught a generation of adults how to listen to--and learn from--children. In this final volume of his work with children, Coles again relies on psychoanalytic observation, unintrusive questioning and meetings stretching over months and years, as he interviews, among others, Hopi children in the Southwest, Catholic, Protestant and Jewish children in the Boston area, Pakistani children in London and Christian children in Tennessee about what God means to them and how God fits in their lives. Often adding to their words with drawings (16 are reproduced here), the children, most around the age of 10, respond with fervency and depth that confirm Coles's close, respectful attention. There are no answers on these pages; only the children, vividly, eloquently present; Coles himself, who, declaring his own secular inclinations, fills out their responses, along with his to them; and the conclusion that intense considerations about the purpose of life and the nature of God occupy all of us, at every age--perhaps never so directly than as children. Author tour. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

Once again, noted psychiatrist Coles has produced a best seller (on The New York Times nonfiction best seller list for eight weeks) about children and their thinking and feeling. Using the power of storytelling and the research he has gathered across the US and from other countries, Coles makes his presentation in narrative fashion rather than in an abstract theoretical manner. He dramatically reveals the themes of children's accounts of their religious and spiritual experiences, grouping the stories into psychological, philosophical, and visionary (leaps of faith) trends. In discussing these themes he also considers other development factors, such as age, social background, sex, nationality, and race. The popularity of this book stems from its storytelling style, the drawings, and the fundamental concern for what children think and feel about the spiritual world, perhaps as a reflection of an adult's own concern about these issues. For anyone with a sincere interest in understanding children. Community college level and up. -E. Pearson, Marywood College

Booklist Review

Coles continues in the vein of his wonderful series of books (e.g., the five-volume set Children of Crisis) with this well-written and compelling look at the way children think and talk about God. Cole's evidence comes not from the sterile classroom or research lab, but from children all over the world, whose candid conversations helped illuminate an often overlooked part of their lives. Cole first discusses the uneasy relationship between psychoanalysis and religion and then moves to a presentation of his method. The rest of the book is devoted to the children. While the primary religions represented are Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, Cole does not ignore the soul-searching of those who do not profess any particular faith or of those who belong to different religious traditions. An excellent book for those who want to know more about children and the development of faith. References; to be indexed. ~--Mary Deeley

Kirkus Book Review

Children as seekers, as young pilgrims well aware that life is a finite journey and. . .anxious to make sense of it. . ."" That, in the words of Harvard psychiatrist Coles, is the image of children that shines through this extraordinary companion volume to his The Moral Lire of Children and The Political Lire of Children (both 1985). And it's not only children who reveal themselves as seekers here. What ultimately is so impressive about this ground-breaking work, what infuses it with a profundity of feeling, is Coles's interwoven, self-critical account of his own search to reconcile spirituality to psychoanalysis, to yoke the youthful spiritual articulations granted him by children to his own adult, secularly trained understanding. Coles bookends with this search, beginning with a questioning and defense of the book's very subject and concluding with memories of one of his own spiritual mentors, Catholic Worker Dorothy Day, And in between, the children talk: rich, poor, healthy, dying, black, white, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Native American, even atheist and agnostic (also thirsty for meaning), responding, sometimes over the course of years, to Coles's questions--""Do you think [God] has different moods?""; ""What [does] hell look like?""--and to his requests to draw God and other spiritualities (included are 16 full-color pages of these ""representations,"" crude but emotionally charged). As a seeker, Cole is reluctant to draw conclusions, quantifiable answers, but he does find, besides recurrent astonishment at the depth and heat of children's spiritual (not necessarily religious) needs and insights, that most Christian children root their search in the soul-soil of ""salvation,"" Muslim children in ""surrender,"" Jewish children in ""righteousness""--and that all ""try to understand not only what is happening to them but why."" Neither a study nor a guide, but an exploration: open-eyed, courageous, sometimes meandering, full of surprises and wonder. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Boston-born psychiatrist and author Robert Martin Coles devoted his professional life to the psychology of children. Coles has been associated with the Harvard University Medical School since 1960.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his five-volume series entitled Children in Crisis, Coles has contributed hundreds of articles to popular magazines, as well as writing over thirty books for adults and children. Other books include The Mind's Fate, Flannery O'Connor's South, and Walker Percy: An American Search.

(Bowker Author Biography)