[T]he time spent contemplating, making connections, and seeking application to the brilliant ideas presented in Thinking, childhood, and Time was time well spent. This work will be read and taught for years to come.

Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis

Readers who recognize in a child’s experience not merely an imperfect attempt at adulthood—but, rather, a unique and profound expressivity—will cherish the work that Peter Costello has advanced in Philosophical Children in Literary Situations. Costello’s gracious and deeply insightful book engages with classics of children’s literature while providing multiple, lucid points of entry into a richly-layered phenomenological method. He writes not only for philosophers but also for educators, parents, and researchers seeking new ways of understanding the complexities of gender, race, meaning, and community that shape a child’s perceptual world.

Jessica Wiskus, Duquesne University

This impressive book is a significant contribution to the emergent field of philosophy of childhood. It breaks new ground by extending our understanding of childhood beyond the chronological, deficit, and romantic conceptions. Thinking, Childhood, and Time includes thirteen original essays that work together to reanimate our sense of childhood as an existential state. In essays that draw upon literature, phenomenology, postmodern theories, and posthuman approaches, the contributors’ explorations of time, natality, community, creativity, culture, and schooling are equally poetic, perceptive, and provocative. A testament to the philosophical interestingness of childhood, this book will have an immediate and lasting impact in education.

Megan Jane Laverty, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University