Iona Opie and the late Peter Opie have devoted their lives to the study of children. Now comes the final volume of their acclaimed trilogy on children's games. Together with Children's Games in Street & Playground (1969) and The Singing Game (1985), this volume completes the most comprehensive study this century. Based on thirty years of research, this intriguing volume focuses on games that use equipment of one kind or another--marbles, jump rope, balls--describing in colorful detail the objects used, the rules of play, and the accompanying rhymes and chants. The Opies examine the history of the games from their earliest appearance and they consider the wider social context, tracing the varying attitudes towards them over the past three hundred years, from pedagogical disapproval, to legal suppression, to the sentimental nostalgia of the present. Here then is the world of play, the imaginary space into which our young ones escape each day. Children's Games With Things is an evocation of this imaginary world as well as a reminder of our own past.
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