Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Coles, Robert - Helen Bevington (review date 26 February 1989)

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Helen Bevington (review date 26 February 1989)

SOURCE: "You Tell Me Yours, I'll Tell You Mine," in New York Times Book Review, February 26, 1989, p. 38.

[In the following review, Bevington situates The Call of Stories in relation to Coles' oeuvre and interests that have marked his career.]

By now most people know Robert Coles. Or for their own sake they ought to. Becoming his patient or his student is, I suppose, the best way to go about it, though to read his books, notably the famous five-volume Children of Crisis, is to make him a lasting friend.

That work, which represents some 20 years Dr. Coles spent in the rural South—in Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Appalachia, New Mexico, among migrants, sharecroppers, mountaineers, Indians, Chicanos—is a study of children in the midst of change, caught in the rising crisis between blacks and whites, helpless in the struggle with poverty and ignorance. It's a study of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Melvin J. Friedman (review date Fall 1982)
   2. Neil Postman (review date 19 January 1986)
   3. Katherine Paterson (review date 2 February 1986)
   4. Jonathan Kellerman (review date 9 February 1986)
   5. New Yorker (review date 10 February 1986)
   6. John Leo (review date 17 March 1986)
   7. Kenneth L. Woodward (review date 6 September 1987)
   8. Jeff Dietrich (review date 13 September 1987)
   9. Fitzhugh Mullan (review date 8 May 1988)
   10. Helen Bevington (review date 26 February 1989)
   11. Francis X. Rocca (review date March 1989)
   12. Iain Bamforth (review date 7-13 July 1989)
   13. Sanford Pinsker (essay date Summer 1989)
   14. Herbert Mitgang (review date 21 November 1990)
   15. Laura Sessions Stepp (review date 23 December 1990)
   16. The New Yorker (review date 7 January 1991)
   17. Virginia C. Hoch (review date 26 August-2 September 1992)
   18. A. J. S. (review date 1993)
   19. Michelle Huneven (essay date 3 October 1993)
   20. Robert A. Sirico (review date 15 November 1993)
   21. Gail Russell Chaddock (review date 9 December 1993)
   22. Ed Walraven (essay date 1994)
   23. Paulina F. Kernberg (review date October 1994)
   24. Richard Bernstein (review date 27 January 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright