| Summary: | "The presses of this country are kept humming by authors who write about children. But all too rarely do we find an individual who writes, not alone from the knowledge and the experience of working many years with children, but whose wisdom springs from a capacity to walk with the child as he takes his first steps into the mystifying world of people and things. Such a person and such a writer is Katherine Reeves. She is preoccupied primarily with what our children must have for emotional and psychological survival in these troubled days. Her deep love for children, her knowledge of the patterns of growth, and her unerring insight into their needs provide comfort and guidance for all of us who need to understand the workings of a small child's mind and heart. In the pages of this book, the author, with compassion, clarity and humor, lifts the curtain on many children; among them the shy child and the bully. She shows us why one must rebel, why another teases, and why still another seems unbearably cruel. She clears a path for us through the mazes of a child's first fears and anxieties, jealousies and defenses. She tells us what learning is and where and how it begins. For every parent and teacher, this book will have deep and poignant meaning. Through it they can reach out to know and understand children better. Parents and teachers face one great trap in studying about children: the facts look so easy! It takes no giant intellect to write about lists of human satisfactions, lists of childhood characteristics ... This is where the trouble comes. We can read, but still know very little. We can know, but still feel too little. We can be very informed but understand not at all. Our mind may be moved but not our hearts. Our tongues take on new words, but our deeds remain the same. Katherine Reeves has the knack for helping us avoid this trap. She makes children come alive. Despite a very simple flowing style, Children ... Their Ways and Wants is full of facts about children. But the facts are there not just for the knowing. They help us feel what it is like to be a child. This feeling with--not simply "knowing about"--Is what it takes to build a good classroom and a good home. Teachers (and parents, too) will find in this book the stimulus to mind and heart that can lead to health and happiness and strength for children"--Jacket. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
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