Children Shouldn’t Use Knives and Other Tales
Adèle Barclay
Children Shouldn’t Use Knives and Other Tales shreds the yellow ribbons of childhood sentimentality and, instead, offers an exploration of what it feels like to be small and vulnerable in a stormy world.
I’m not nostalgic for childhood. Childhood was terrifying—the lack of agency, the grownup world’s opaque set of rules, the playground’s ferocious pecking order, the fear of real and imaginary things. And so I’m grateful that Shirley Camia’s
Children Shouldn’t Use Knives and Other Tales shreds the yellow ribbons of childhood sentimentality and, instead, offers an exploration of what it feels like to be small and vulnerable in a stormy world.