Play Stuff Blog

When the National Toy Hall of Fame inducts new toys each year, people notice—tens of millions notice. Clipping services send us news of the news. We find out that people are reading about inducted toys in Johannesburg, Tokyo, Moscow, Karachi, and New Delhi. And in Azerbaijan and Vanuatu. Two Irish news outlets fought over who…

There’s something liberating about the yo-yo. I keep one on my desk for emergencies—like when a balky sentence has me hanging. You’d be surprised at how a twisted paragraph will straighten out and fly right after a few tosses of a yo-yo. In his superb novel, Stop Time, Frank Conroy wrote, “To yo-yo you have…