Their Eyes Meeting World CL

Throughout his three decades of exploring the ways children understand their worlds, child psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Coles (Children in Crisis series; The Spiritual Life of Children ) has asked youngsters to draw pictures. He observes that ``often children don't want to talk very much'' and that his interaction with them has been limited by language and social barriers as well. He discovered that by drawing and painting, children can show ``what was happening,'' as notes a black girl at the forefront of the 1960s integration efforts in the South. Taking care to avoid overinterpretation, Coles first offers an extended illustrated essay about the realities of childhood as revealed in many of the 50 color reproductions here. He comments specifically in a second section on additional pictures drawn by Eskimo children, native American children living in the Southwest, and children raised in urban ghettos and rural backwoods in the U.S. and Central America, recalling each young artist and the context of each work. Seeing more than a visual life of children in these efforts, Coles shares an insightful and respectful glimpse of their inner lives. (Nov.)