Cheap Growing Up Creative (Book) (TERESA M. AMABIBLE) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Growing Up Creative

Nurture creative potential
When you are trying to help a child develop her or his creative potential, you don't have to worry about the nature-nurture debate. Nurture is your only option. This book is a useful introduction to the developmental social psychology of creativity, and it is a good place to start for nurturing the realization of creative potential. Helping kids become more creative is a good cause, and "Growing Up Creative" is a good book.

---

Not my kids you don't
This book is wonderful in a number of ways, none of which, unfortunately, really get to the point of creativity. It is a light survey of the actual research results on creativity done in a very well communicated way that most people can understand. It does not distort or exaggerate points so it is above the zillion books on 6 ways to be a genius and 12 ways to think like Linus Pauling. It is comprehensive, balanced, and comprehensible. So, what is it missing? It is missing something important.

I guess, my gut reaction was--I want my kids to be about 20 times as creative as this book wants them to be. The soul of creating is what is missing. You get an academic researcher soul showing you what creating is. I would rather have a creator's soul showing me. In a perfect world you could get onto Harvard's faculty while having a creator's soul; in our actual world you have to publish little research articles and be liked by journal editors and well placed colleagues. There is too much intangible fitting in and playful insoucience where there needs to be drive, passion, persistence, immense challenge, penetrating tough fields for year after year, visiting conferences with mom and dad, playfully spotting hot and dying subfields at them, imagining what thought operation produced some new conference topic and so on. THis book is a great foundation for creating "creative" people who lack the soul and toughness to create. It is too polite in some ways.

---

Excellent resource for teachers
Dr. Amabile does a fantastic job of explaining that creativity is NOT something you just have or don't have at birth - it depends on an environment that supports creativity and a person's intrinsic motivation. This is a great book full of practical examples that parents and teachers alike can don to help foster creativity in children. As well, any adult who has a creativity block would be wise to read this - you may find that through a few forgiving changes in outlook towards yourself and your own abilities, you do indeed have the ability to be powerfully creative and original.