Robert Coles: Listening to Children

Robert Coles had a long career as a child psychiatrist and a writer. He died on June 4, 2026, at a hospice in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and he was 97. He taught at Harvard and he was known for listening to children in difficult places.

His five-volume series, Children of Crisis, was published from the late 1960s and explored how children dealt with change, poverty, and race. The second and third volumes shared the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1973. Coles often used crayons and quiet conversations to record children's words and drawings, and his method has been discussed in medical humanities and education.

Coles wrote more than fifty books about moral life, spirituality, and politics as experienced by young people. His work has influenced teachers and health professionals, although some critics argued that his method was more literary than clinical. Nevertheless, students and readers have been introduced to children's perspectives by his books, and many of those books continue to be used in classrooms and training programs.