The Play Of Children Current Theory And Research

The Play of Children: Current Theory and Research

Out of the Garden

This timely and innovative book provides a detailed history of marketing to children, revealing the strategies that shape the design of toys and have a powerful impact on the way children play. Stephen Kline looks at the history and development of children's play culture and toys from the teddy bear and Lego to the Barbie doll, Care Bears and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He profiles the rise of children's mass media - books, comics, film and television - and that of the specially stores such as Toys 'R' Us, revealing how the opportunity to reach large audiences of children through television was a pivotal point in developing new approaches to advertising. Contemporary youngsters, he shows, are catapulted into a fantastic and chaotic time-space continuum of action toys thanks to the merchandisers' interest in animated television. Kline looks at the imagery and appeal of the toy commercials and at how they provide a host of stereotyped figures around which children can organize their imaginative experience. He shows how the deregulation of advertising in the United States in the 1980s has led directly to the development of the new marketing strategies which use television series to saturate the market with promotional "character toys". Finally, in a powerful re-examination of the debates about the cultural effects of television, Out of the Garden asks whether we should allow our children's play culture to be primarily defined and created by marketing strategies, pointing to the unintended consequences of a situation in which images of real children have all but been eliminated from narratives about the young.

The Development of Children's Imaginative Writing (1984)

Published in 1984. The more we know about young writers, the more we observe them as they write, discuss the composing process with them, talk to them about the sources of their ideas and the difficulties which they encounter as they try to captures thoughts and feelings in words, the greater will be our understanding of imaginative activity and the part it plays in children’s personal and social development. This is the essential theme of the book and the contributors stress the importance of sympathetic and sensitive guidance by teachers and parents in encouraging the imaginative process in young children. The personal diaries, stories and conversations with young writers which appear in this book illustrate how children can use imaginative writing as a means of coming to terms with social and emotional issues in their lives. The book presents first a theoretical analysis of the imaginative writing process and then goes on to explore children’s growing awareness of themselves and others through their perception of sex-roles, their way of dealing symbolically with illness and death, fear and separation, religious and spiritual experiences, and their understanding of social relationships with family and friends. The writing process itself is examined in detail and parallels drawn between the adult and child writer. The final part of the book presents children’s own reflections on writing, shows one classroom community in action and discusses the extent to which children themselves can gain control of their own writing process.