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Strong National Museum of Play®
One Manhattan Square
Rochester, NY 14607
Phone: 585-263-2700
Book Reviews
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Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Laura E. Berk, and Dorothy G. Singer, A Mandate for Playful Learning in the Preschool: Presenting the EvidenceReviewed by Karen VanderVen [First Paragraph] A Mandate for Playful Learning in the Preschool: Presenting the Evidence offers strong new ammunition desperately needed to halt the forces that devalue play. However, do not look for charming little vignettes that illustrate engaging play scenes. They are not here. Rather, the fact that this book gets right to the points that it so compellingly makes may, in itself, attract busy readers as well as give believers resource material for framing their own approaches. |
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Edward Miller and Joan Almon, Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in SchoolReviewed by Jim Johnson [First Paragraph] The Alliance for Childhood is an international, nonprofit advocacy group composed of leaders in education, health, and other fields who care fervently about the well-being and the suffering of our kids today. This new publication seeks to create greater awareness and outcry concerning the demise of play in early-childhood education. The coauthors—both well-known educators, writers, and champions of children—present recent research and identify play culprits in schools and society, and then follow with important and informed suggestions to try to get us back on track to restoring play to its rightful place in our nation’s kindergartens and other early-childhood educational settings. |
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Linda Nazareth, The Leisure Economy: How Changing Demographics, Economics, and Generational Attitudes Will Reshape Our Lives and Our IndustriesReviewed by Garry Chick [First Paragraph] In the 1980s and 1990s, I taught a class of 200 to 250 students an Introduction to Leisure Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and often showed a film titled Leisure: Living with the 20– Hour Week. Produced in 1970, it heralded a new age of leisure with people working only twenty hours per week or maybe six months per year and having access to new kinds of resorts all over the world. Freedom and escape would be everywhere. The new era was scheduled to begin in the 1980s, and the profound changes that would usher it in were in the area of technology, specifically the mechanization and automation of work. The film had been created even before the introduction of useful personal computers such as the Apple II in 1977 and the IBM PC in 1981, but its various narrators boldly predicted the end of work as we know it. Machines, the film forecast, would be doing it all for us. Not only did the predictions fail to materialize, but by the mid-1980s, the film was simply silly. The predictions—as well as the clothes and hairstyles of those in the film—evoked peals of laughter in my classes. My point in showing the film was to illustrate the peril in making predictions. As someone once said, more or less (the quote has been attributed to a host of wits from Yogi Berra to Albert Einstein), “It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” |
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Brian Edmiston, Forming Ethical Identities in Early Childhood PlayReviewed by Stuart Reifel [First Paragraph] Part of Routledge’s Contesting Early Childhood series, Brian Edmiston’s Forming Ethical Identities in Early Childhood Play adds to the growing literature on the experience of classroom play. In particular, he explores some of the meanings of ethical relationships that are inherent in the social context of early-childhood classrooms. Unlike John Dewey, with his pragmatic notion about play and classroom community, Edmiston works from a dialogic perspective; play activities are where ethical identities are “authored” by the participants. Rather than seeing play primarily as a developmental phenomenon like Jean Piaget or Lev S. Vygotsky, Edmiston elaborates on the moral meanings that contribute to who players are as they create classroom play. This approach to understanding play adds a whole new layer to the sets of meanings that we can consider when we practice and study classroom play. |
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Carl Honoré, Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children From the Culture of Hyper-Parenting; Hara Estroff Marano, A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting; and Tom Farrey, Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our ChildrenReviewed by W. George Scarlett [First Paragraph] Some people believe that if the next generation is not, indeed, going to hell, it is on some kind of downwardtrajectory created by bad parenting. These days some of those expressing such opinions know how to write, how to organize their arguments, and how to present their facts, all in a way that makes the age-old complaint seem less sentimental and even, somehow, scientific. At least this is so of the authors of three recent books on, respectively, the culture of hyperparenting, invasive parenting, and parenting obsessed with raising star athletes. Let us consider all three books together because all three authors see the way so many parents raise children to satisfy their own egos as a growing worldwide problem. |
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Marjorie Harness Goodwin, The Hidden Life of Girls: Games of Stance, Status, and ExclusionReviewed by Tracy Vaillancourt [First Paragraph] Sugar and spice and everything nice—far from it. Marjorie Harness Goodwin’s ethnographic account of the interpersonal behavior of preadolescent girls shatters the antiquate stereotype. In this well-researched book, we witness firsthand the Machiavellian politics of the playground, where scheming behavior is the rule rather than the exception. What clearly emerges from this important research is that the negotiation of power among middle-school girls is complicated and clumsy. For example, Goodwin’s systematic account of a seemingly benign childhood activity such as hopscotch reveals intricate details about rules, status, and competition. Clearly the play of girls is highly circumscribed, and what looks like play to an adult outsider is in effect a convoluted series of interactions. In these interactions, games act as a pretext for trying out, albeit awkwardly, different social roles. |
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Elizabeth Goodenough, ed., A Place for Play: A Companion Volume to the Michigan Television Film “Where do the Children Play?”Reviewed by Rhonda Clements [First Paragraph] It is rare to find a collection of selected writings focusing on the topic of children’s play tat can hold a reader’s interest from article to article. After all, the topic is usually embedded in nostalgia and personal reflections, and thetypical reader will likely doze off in a comfortable chair after pondering fond memories of childhood activities. However, A Place for Play is an anthology of articles, research summaries, essays, and poems that blend the works of more than twenty national and international experts into a captivating rationale for restoring and preserving child’s play. The book makes a convincing argument that as society has become more complex, play has also become more regulated and regimented with fewer opportunities for children to interact in a natural setting. This change has strong implications for a child’s normal, healthy development. |
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Tim Gill, No Fear: Growing up in a Risk Averse SocietyReviewed by Mary Rivkin [First Paragraph] The extended essay No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society presents a coherent, well-documented description of the interacting forces (especially parents, schools, judges, recreation workers, regulators, and the media) that severely limit five- to eleven-year-old children in their development of confidence, agency, knowledge, and happiness. The essay considers children of the United Kingdom in particular but, by extension, children in the United States too. These encroachments of the adult world include excessive monitoring, placing of some experiences and spaces off limits, the loss of natural environments, and the reduction of recess and other free time. Tim Gill bases his argument on child development theory and research and on practical experience. He also notes that children in northern European countries (particularly Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Germany) have more opportunities for play. |
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Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone under 30)Reviewed by Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr. [First Paragraph] There has always been a tradition of distrusting the younger generation, of feeling that somehow they are not as hardworking, as engaged, or as knowledgeable as their elders. Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation has as its thesis that the current generation is, in fact, less accomplished and skilled than their predecessors and that this has occurred as a result of their pervasive use of new media in the form of computers, the Internet, cell phones, blogging, and Facebook. According to him, "Instead of opening young American minds to the stores of civilization and science and politics, technology has contracted the horizon to themselves and the social scene around them" (p. 10). The new technologies have made it possible for America's youth to isolate themselves in a cocoon—of teen imagery, songs, hot gossip, games, and youth-to-youth communications—that is instantaneous, limited, and isolating. |
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Diana Seach, Interactive Play for Children with AutismReviewed by Pamela Wolfberg [First Paragraph] The growing numbers of children diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorders are drawing significant attention to identifying effective education and therapeutic interventions. Autism refers here to a broad definition that ranges from severe to mild forms of classic autism and Asperger syndrome, all of which share common features. Lorna Wing and Judith Gould identified these features (what they called a "triad of impairments" in reciprocal social interaction, communication, and imagination) that characterized autism in their 1979 article for the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. As I noted in Play and Imagination in Children with Autism (1999), these core challenges are inextricably linked to a child's capacity to develop spontaneous play across social and symbolic dimensions. |
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Sue Rogers and Julie Evans, Inside Role-Play in Early Childhood Education: Researching Young Children’s PerspectivesReviewed by James E. Johnson [First Paragraph] In their new book, Sue Rogers and Julie Evans focus on early education in the United Kingdom (UK) for the "muddle in the middle," that is, they look at teaching and child-play theory in the reception class, which is what the British call the first class of primary school. (Rogers is a senior lecturer in education at the University of London, and Evans is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University College Plymouth St. Mark & St. John.) The book is based on their interesting research of kids' "being four" in contrast to "becoming five." They generate such research through observations and innovative interviews of teachers and young children to acquire perspectives on social pretense or role playing both indoors and outdoors at school. This book and its modest ethnographic research are timely and significant for readers in the United States, where kids go through preschool nowadays at three and four years of age and where academic models that denigrate play flourish under learning standards, accountability, and the rubric of "No Child Left Behind." |
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Jan White, Playing and Learning Outdoors: Making Provision for High-Quality Experiences in the Outdoor EnvironmentReviewed by Olga S. Jarret [First Paragraph] Drawing on more than twenty years of experience as an early childhood educator and consultant, Jan White has written a practical guide for providing creative outdoor experiences for young children. Although the book can be read quickly, it provides an excellent reference on good practice that its readers will turn to again and again. |
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Susan Linn, The Case for Make-Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized WorldReviewed by David Elkind [First Paragraph] On reading the title of Susan Linn's new book, one might well ask: Why does anyone have to make the case for the benefits of make-believe play? More than a century ago, in his analysis of Little Hans, Sigmund Freud demonstrated how a child's makebelieve could serve a therapeutic purpose. Since Freud's time, play therapy has become the most frequently used technique in the child psychiatrist's, and child clinical psychologist's, toolbox. More recently, Bruno Bettleheim in The Uses of Enchantment (1976) took the benefits of fantasy outside of the clinic. He made a powerful argument for the role of fairy tales in the healthy development of all children. But times have changed, and with today's emphasis on academic achievement, testing, and accountability, play and fantasy are under attack as a waste of time and a luxury we simply cannot afford in this high-tech, global economy. |
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Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson, Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth about Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do.Katie Salen, The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and LearningReviewed by Stephen Jacobs [First Paragraph] Video games currently occupy the hot seat in the furor around the impact of media Book Reviews 389 on minors. As is the case with the other historically contested media forms—dime novels, comic books, pop music, film, and television—video games have the ability to entertain and educate. Some think their interactive nature can make them more engaging and therefore more dangerous than the other media forms. As with comic books and animation, popular opinion treats video games as entertainment for kids, despite the fact the average age of video game enthusiasts over the past few years is in the midthirties. |
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Ann E. Densmore, Helping Children with Autism Become More Social: 76 Ways to Use Narrative PlayReviewed by Virginia Ryan [First Paragraph] Ann Densmore's book is very much a distillation of her many years' experience with children who have autism. Her book is intriguing on several levels. As she describes in her numerous examples, Densmore has found creative ways to engage autistic children by using the natural world in which they live. I especially liked her descriptions of a farm setting for lively, preschool twin boys and a lakeside setting for quieter, young girls she worked with over longer periods of time. Densmore's love of nature and her talent for sharing her experiences with her clients and encouraging them to develop their own connections with nature are touching and compelling. Her clinical examples also are in keeping with current thinking about autism, which calls for developing children's social skills, play, and language as a whole at the outset, rather than using more discrete skills training. Densmore also demonstrates how she helped unrelated children develop their social interactions with one another by her skilled and intensive scaffolding of their play experiences in her presence over a long period of time. Densmore brings her speech therapy practice to her work with these children in productive ways, showing how play and social interactions are at the heart of the motivation to communicate and need to be addressed first for children who are more profoundly autistic. In these ways Densmore's book will be a valuable resource for everyone interested in autism and in ways to work creatively with children having serious developmental difficulties. |
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Dorothy G. Singer, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, eds. Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive and Social- Emotional GrowthReviewed by Doris Bergen [First Paragraph] This book is a compilation of material from a conference on Play = Learning held at Yale University in June 2005. The majority of authors are well known in the fields of expertise that correspond to their chapter topics. The editors' purpose was to counter recent perspectives that focus on teacher strategies, parent-structured activities, and government policies and have served to minimize the role of play as the major medium for young children's learning. |
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Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American HistoryReviewed by Steven Mintz [First Paragraph] Richly researched and gracefully written, Children at Play—the first full-length history of American children's play—could scarcely be more timely. There is widespread fear—evident in the popularity of such bestsellers as The Dangerous Book for Boys (2007) and The Daring Book for Girls (2007)—that imaginative, self-initiated play is disappearing from the lives of overscheduled and overprotected twenty-first-century kids. Many worry that violent, sexist video games are isolating and desensitizing children; that the Internet and new media are eroding childhood innocence at too early an age; that aggressive marketers are distorting children's body image and material aspirations; and that a heightened stress on early academic achievement and a test-driven school curriculum have taken the play out of childhood. |
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David Elkind. The Power of Play: How Spontaneous, Imaginative Activities Lead to Happier, Healthier ChildrenReviewed by Thomas Armstrong [First Paragraph] The real power of David Elkind's new book The Power of Play lies in the fact that it takes us inside the mind of one of the greatest developmental thinkers of our time. A disciple of Jean Piaget, Elkind was a key figure in the resurgence of the Swiss psychologist's work in America in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s, Elkind turned his explorations toward social critique, indicting our modern, fast-paced, technological society for pushing children out of childhood too quickly. The hurried-child syndrome is his legacy from that period. Now, in The Power of Play, Elkind brings these two facets of his work together—along with his experience as a Freudian-influenced clinician, a teacher, a father, and a grandfather—to give us a rich and varied perspective on the value of play for our postmodern era. |
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Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
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James Paul Gee, Good Video Games + Good Learning: Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning, and LiteracyMarc Prensky, “Don’t Bother Me Mom—I’m Learning!”: How Computer and Video Games Are Preparing Your Kids for Twenty-first Century Success—and How You Can Help!Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer, Imagination and Play in the Electronic AgeReviewed by Barrie Gunter [First Paragraph] As the complexity, production quality, and popularity of electronic games have evolved, public concern about their impact on those who play with them has become increasingly vociferous. Much of this attention has been directed towards children, as always when the subject concerns popular media forms. Many of the anxieties associated with the alleged effects of television have been transferred to computer and video games, not least because so many of them have violent themes. The widespread use of self-contained electronic games, which can be bought off the shelf from major retail outlets, and the growing popularity of online games, which engage multiple players in real time, have drawn not just the usual lobby groups but even national governments into the debate about whether these games are good or bad for our children. Much of the concern stems from the fact that, in playing these games, children enter a realm where they know more than their parents. As a result, parents often feel they lack the competence to effectively monitor their children's behavior and therefore to know for sure whether they are at risk.
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