Vous voulez voir cette page en français ? Cliquez ici.


or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
The Kindness of Children
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

The Kindness of Children [Paperback]

Vivian Gussin Paley (Author)
3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 17.50
Price: CDN$ 12.78 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 25. Details
You Save: CDN$ 4.72 (27%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.
Only 2 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).
Want it delivered Tuesday, May 29? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout.

Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover CDN $30.50   -- --
Paperback CDN $12.78   -- --

Frequently Bought Together

The Kindness of Children + You Can't Say You Can't Play + The Boy on the Beach: Building Community through Play
Price For All Three: CDN$ 39.25

Show availability and shipping details

Buy the selected items together

  • In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 25. Details

  • You Can't Say You Can't Play by Vivian Gussin Paley Paperback CDN$ 13.51

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 25. Details

  • The Boy on the Beach: Building Community through Play by Vivian Gussin Paley Hardcover CDN$ 12.96

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 25. Details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Product Details

Product Description

From Library Journal

The author of such inspirational books as The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter and You Can't Say You Can't Play, focuses here on the power of stories to transform children's lives. Paley, a MacArthur Award-winning teacher, presents a series of intertwined tales. The first is Teddy's. On a visit to a British kindergarten, a profoundly disabled child named Teddy is offered a starring role in a classroom drama. "Pretend you're the puppy and you didn't learn to walk yet," Teddy's playmates urge. While the teachers focus on Teddy's disability, his classmates home in on his ability to participate in acting out their story. Back home in Chicago, and still moved by Teddy and his classmates, Paley repeats the story to her frail, 97-year-old mother, who lives in a nursing home. Paley's mother says the actions of Teddy's classmates remind her of the "mitzvah," or good deed, so honored in Judaism. She, in turn, shares Teddy's story with another nursing home resident, a retired teacher. They, too, connect through Teddy's story and begin their own friendship. Paley urges those who work with children to help them create and act out stories. In a classroom, "spontaneous storytellers create little homes for one another where everyone can imagine playing a role and no one is left out." Paley argues that when children listen to, act in, and record their stories, these actions transcend isolation and heal. "If... in the process of pretending to be someone or something else, children learn, even for a moment, to walk in another person's footsteps, could this be the supreme mitzvah of all?"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

Despite its vague, somewhat saccharine title, this short book is a subtle, psychologically and imaginatively rich guide to one of the important ways in which children learn how to be more fully human: namely, kindness. Paley, a former kindergarten teacher, a MacArthur Award recipient, and the prolific author of many books about children and education (The Girl with the Brown Crayon, 1997, etc.), describes how very young students transform themselves and one another by taking in, narrating, and sometimes dramatically acting out tales of kindness and other acts of goodness. The infant returns a smile; the schoolchild returns a story, she observes. Beginning with the true account of Teddy, a multi-handicapped boy in a London school who wears a padded helmet and is treated sensitively by a normal student, she delves into the matter of how children, at their best, find ways of reaching out to those in need, thus allowing themselves and their peers to grow morally. Yet her book is less about the kindness of children than about the imaginative and ethical power of narratives about goodness for young minds. Her writings allusivee.g., she makes reference to traditional Jewish teachings about kindnessand sometimes poetic. On occasion, the book suffers from hyperbole, as when Paley writes about childrens acts of goodness that rock the [moral] universe. Perhaps because she believes that children are often more kind to each other than unkind, Paley doesnt delve enough into the interplay between childrens propensities for kindness and for cruelty. This is unfortunate, especially since the single time she writes about a child who reports being hated and shunned by her peers is the volumes most interesting section. But in general, Paley instructively illustrates how the children with whom she interacts so well are making sense of all the unspoken messages articulated to them while theyre also creating little homes for one another where everyone can imagine playing and no one is left out. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See all Product Description

Tag this product

 (What's this?)
Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.
Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

› Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

9 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.4 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most helpful customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Sweet book, poignant stories about children..., Aug 20 2001
By 
K. L Sadler "Dr. Karen L. Sadler" (Freedom, Pa. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Kindness of Children (Hardcover)
I don't know what I expected from this book. I thought it would be a series of stories about children being kind. It actually ended up as a free-flowing continuous stream-of-consciousness tale on the part of the author. It was partly on the children, and partly on the reaction of the author and other teachers towards the small kindnesses that children give to one another in diverse situations. Even though Paley tells us about the interesting story-telling learning which she instigates, the story-telling is less important to the book then the kindnesses of the children. The story-telling is the means by which the kindnesses continue, a means to acknowledge that kindness has occurred, and that children are responsible for solitary acts that can have ripple-like effects.

What I find incredibly interesting and wish that Paley had dealt with is that this behavior of small children prior to the fourth grade seems to be 'taught' out of children, by the adults in their lives. I may be wrong about this, but the national problems with bullying seem to occur right after third grade (which most educators and parents know is a major transitional point). Where is it that we are teaching our children not to be kind to others?

This book is sweet and extremely interesting. Paley brings up the possibility of an intelligence based not on intellect, but on an inner sense of being able to 'see' when another person is hurting. I would have liked more information...this book raises more questions then it provides the solutions for....

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


4.0 out of 5 stars Kindness, April 13 2001
This review is from: The Kindness of Children (Hardcover)
While this is certainly not her best book that does not mean it is not a wonderful tale of Mrs. Paley's experience working with children. Like many of her other books, this is a narrative tale of individual events that have been strung together to show a common theme. In this book, Paley focuses upon her art of having children create their own imaginative stories that are then acted out by the other children in the class. She digs deeper though to watch how the children interact.

She tells of her observations and revelations that children are able to look past the minor defects and imperfections in a person's appearance or character and accept them for who they are. It is somewhere along our journey to adulthood that we lose that ability. Paley focuses upon the children and the actions that seem so remarkable to us that are so ordinary for them.

What this book lacks however is in-depth analysis of a group of children. This is not Paley's fault however. Since she has left teaching she does not have the time with a single group of children necessary to make such observations. It is still a wonderful introspective on the way adults and children differ in our social interactions.

Why 4 stars?: This book tells a nice and interesting tale of Paley's experiences with several classrooms around the world. She tells us of her observations of the why children are able to be unprejudiced and show true kindness to other children because they know no other way. Adults, on the other hand, seem to do it out of necessity. She reminds us that "The moral universe lies on the breath of schoolchildren." However, it would have been nicer to see some deeper analyses of groups and the individual episodes could have been strung together better. All in all, this is a nice and inspiring book for teachers and parents alike.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


4.0 out of 5 stars Heartwarming, Oct 16 2000
By 
This review is from: The Kindness of Children (Hardcover)
This is the first book by Paley I have read, and now I'm hooked! I am touched by her sensitivity and her openness to the wonder of the world of children. I felt that I was right there with her at the "storytelling table." An added bonus was her valuable references to Jewish storytelling traditions and her many biblical references. Anyone who works with children, especially "at-risk" children, would benefit from this book. An intimate and expressive work.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
› Go to Amazon.com to see all 9 reviews  3.4 out of 5 stars 
 
 		 Most recent customer reviews







Only search this product's reviews


Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject




















i.e., each book must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Amazon.ca Privacy Statement Amazon.ca Shipping Information Amazon.ca Returns & Exchanges