Parenting & Family Quote by Gail Godwin

Calling children a "race" is the first sly move here: Gail Godwin borrows the language of species and tribe to make childhood feel like a separate nation with its own laws. It’s slightly anthropological, but also intimate, the way a novelist might stand at the border between adult rationality and a kid’s strange competence. "Race" suggests solidarity and secrecy; adults are outsiders, forever translating.

Then comes the delicious contradiction in "magically sagacious". Sagacity is hard-won, dried-out wisdom, the kind you’re supposed to earn through pain and time. Godwin splices it to "magically", implying children don’t reason their way to insight; they arrive there by instinct, pattern-recognition, and emotional radar. It’s not that they know more facts. They know more about the room: who’s lying, what’s being withheld, where the soft spots are. In fiction, that’s often the real currency.

The phrase also carries a faint warning. Adults like to imagine children as blank, harmless, easily managed. Godwin’s line pushes against that sentimental alibi. Children observe with ruthless attention because they have to; they’re dependent, and dependence trains perception. Their "powers" are adaptive, even defensive.

Contextually, this fits a novelist’s project: honoring the interior life that polite society keeps minimizing. Godwin isn’t romanticizing childhood as pure; she’s elevating it as hyper-aware. The magic isn’t fantasy. It’s the eerie accuracy of a child reading adults who think they’re unreadable.