What do you think?
Rate this book
The Children Are Reading
The Children Are Reading inhabits childhood spaces, physical and imaginative, through the looking-glass of grown-up longing.
- GenresPoetry
87 pages, Paperback
Published September 5, 2017
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 21, 2019
I thoroughly enjoyed many of the poems in this collection. The allusions to childhood literature in many of the poems were wonderfully done. These are also some of the most delicious creepy poems I've ever eaten. An unusual collection very worth reading.
July 14, 2018
Fried has created a cohesive collection of poems firmly connected to each other in repeated images and sounds, stretched between the geography of America's Northeast and the children's literature of England, glittering in its finely spun web. Its lines will echo in my head like the tales my parents read to me.
May 1, 2019
Reading this book felt like drinking a glass of water after a run. It was satisfying and calming. I loved it. Here's one of my favorite poems:
The Little God
The little god emerges from behind the shed
in his red leotard and his cowboy hat.
He doesn't always show up when we pray,
but mostly he humors us, strutting out belly first.
The little god is not my son disguised as a little god;
it is the other way around, it turns out.
I have a son, an older one; you would have thought
that I would know the difference. Now it is too much
to think of if the god was ever my son —
of whether he has been replaced
by a little god identical to him
or whether he was never mine, exactly.
Maybe it's the same, the not-knowing
and the not-thinking of not-knowing.
Maybe, even if he were my son,
I would feel this same uneasy reverence.
The Little God
The little god emerges from behind the shed
in his red leotard and his cowboy hat.
He doesn't always show up when we pray,
but mostly he humors us, strutting out belly first.
The little god is not my son disguised as a little god;
it is the other way around, it turns out.
I have a son, an older one; you would have thought
that I would know the difference. Now it is too much
to think of if the god was ever my son —
of whether he has been replaced
by a little god identical to him
or whether he was never mine, exactly.
Maybe it's the same, the not-knowing
and the not-thinking of not-knowing.
Maybe, even if he were my son,
I would feel this same uneasy reverence.
April 27, 2025
Nice! This collection of poetry was written by a professor at the local university. Maybe I'll make an effort to bump into him sometime.
These poems are probably more powerful if you are a parent, since they do tend - especially in the beginning - to concern the cast-to-the-wind whimsy of children. But my favorite is the sing-songy "Twilight Field," which is less about a child and (implicitly) more so about capturing/recapturing/maintaining the limitless mindset of a child through adulthood. Being a parent rekindles that if you're doing it right.
Another favorite is "Dawn," which includes the sublime line, "And there's the tree a god made of a girl."
Wish I could write like this! Sometimes I think I'm close.
Recommended for anyone who mixed "potions" as a child.
These poems are probably more powerful if you are a parent, since they do tend - especially in the beginning - to concern the cast-to-the-wind whimsy of children. But my favorite is the sing-songy "Twilight Field," which is less about a child and (implicitly) more so about capturing/recapturing/maintaining the limitless mindset of a child through adulthood. Being a parent rekindles that if you're doing it right.
Another favorite is "Dawn," which includes the sublime line, "And there's the tree a god made of a girl."
Wish I could write like this! Sometimes I think I'm close.
Recommended for anyone who mixed "potions" as a child.
October 13, 2023
The melancholy echo of childhood is captured in this book of poems; experiences long forgotten will play hide and seek with you as the faces of long lost friends loop you back to those days when your only care was how late you could stay out riding your bike with your friends. Evocative and haunting, one of the best books of poetry I have read this year.
July 12, 2023
Read Harder 2023 - Task #13 & #14 ALT [blind date w/ a book]
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews