Children's Games with Things by Iona Opie
Concluding a trilogy of books on children's games, this is a comprehensive study of the nature of children's play. Following "Children's Games in Street and Playground" (1969), and "The Singing Game" (1985), and based on the surveys of the 1950s to 1970s, the present volume deals with children's games that use equipment of one kind or another, such as marbles, fivestones, skipping and ball-bouncing, and describes in fascinating detail the objects used, the rules of play, the accompanying rhymes and chants, and the history of the games from their earliest appearance. In this volume it has been possible to put traditional games into a wider social context, to show that many of them were once adult amusements, and to trace the varying attitudes towards them over the past 300 years, from pedagogical disapproval, to legal suppression, to the sentimental nostalgia of the present day. Related topics such as "do games come in seasons?", and "are the games really disappearing?" are also covered. Games have a rich language of their own. Marbles terms (bosser, cannons, fulking, kell, smugs), the names and rules of fivestones (chucks, dandies, gobs, ducks in the pond and flydob scatsie), the surreal verses chanted by the girls, about a lady on a mountain, or a Little Fatty Doctor whose wife can't eat fish, are all part of a world of play into which children can escape. "Children's Games with Things" is an evocation of that world, and a reminder of the need for children to play their own games under their own jurisdiction. This book is intended for general readers interested in history of children's games, social historians, sociologists, teachers, educationalists, folklorists, and parents.
Iona Opie has dedicated her life to collecting and preserving children's rhymes as an art form. I suppose my message in life is 'Nursery rhymes are good for you.' And the sooner you start, the better. I always have one myself every morning. I just open a nursery rhyme book at random. This morning I read:
Taffy was born on a
moonshiney night. His head in a pipskin,
his heels upright. You see, if you acquire a nursery rhyme-ical attitude, you're not at all put out by life's little bumps and bruises--they just seem funny and entirely normal.
Rosemary Wells says, We live in a time when our language is shrinking. Mother Goose, which represents our language at its most innocent, playful, and profound, is in danger of disappearing completely. Rhymes that have been repeated and refined for forty generations are no longer being taught to children. It is a great honor to work with Iona Opie with the hope of preserving these rhymes for many generations more. Rosemary wells lives in New York.
Taffy was born on a
moonshiney night. His head in a pipskin,
his heels upright. You see, if you acquire a nursery rhyme-ical attitude, you're not at all put out by life's little bumps and bruises--they just seem funny and entirely normal.
Rosemary Wells says, We live in a time when our language is shrinking. Mother Goose, which represents our language at its most innocent, playful, and profound, is in danger of disappearing completely. Rhymes that have been repeated and refined for forty generations are no longer being taught to children. It is a great honor to work with Iona Opie with the hope of preserving these rhymes for many generations more. Rosemary wells lives in New York.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780192159632 |
| ISBN 10 | 0192159631 |
| Title | Children's Games with Things |
| Author | Iona Opie |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Year published | 1998-02-01 |
| Number of pages | 365 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |