This article aims to provide insights of social justice awareness in young children's pretend play (2-6 years old) involving shopping activities in the nursery and the children's museum. Previous literature acknowledges the importance of grocery exhibits and relevant learning centres in the cognitive and socio-cultural development of children, but…

In this paper, I explore thinking that happens in children's meaningful engagement with the city. To open up my argument, I discuss two events during which children are caught up in "intra-active" play with things and spaces. I argue that this mode of being joyfully engaged with one's surroundings is key to what Jane Bennett (2001) calls…

The future of childhood is often described in terms of utopian thinking. Here, the turn is towards dystopia as a fertile source of wild imaginings about the future. The dystopian literary fictions featured here act as a message and are projections of an uneasy future requiring a reader to see the present differently. Such projections make reading…

How can we explain children's understanding of the unseen world? Young children are generally able to distinguish between real unobservable entities and fantastical ones, but they attribute different characteristics to and show less confidence in their decisions about fantastical entities generally endorsed by adults, such as Santa Claus. One…

Drawing on the theory of dialogism and the literature on children's culture and cultural resistance, this article investigates the contextual and textual features of the cultural making of a group of children in sociodramatic play in a Hong Kong kindergarten. Different from other, similar studies, this study reports that under the gaze of the…

Like many a modern play theorist, both Mark Twain and Walt Disney were enchanted by the way children act out stories, in particular pirate tales. For both Twain and Disney, this fascination grew out of their small-town, midwestern boyhoods, where avid reading and fantasy play helped stave off boredom and fill emotional gaps for both of them. Even…

The authors use Noam Chomsky's theories about generative grammar to discuss the notion of linguistic creativity they believe lies at the core of storytelling as Salman Rushdie pictures it in his novel, "Haroun and the Sea of Stories." The production of meaning through the use of narrative helps explain the rules of the literary game,…

The authors investigate the nearly ubiquitous cultural icon for girls' play, the princess. They survey historical instances of princess play from the beginning of the American republic to the New Millennium, look at the literature concerning princesses in various periods, and discuss the individual recollections about princess play of a number of…

A preeminent play-theory scholar reviews a lifetime devoted to the study of play in a lively, even playful, recounting of his illustrious career and some of its autobiographical roots. The author covers the development of his three major theories of play--as a viability variable, as culturally relative play forms, and as a co-evolutionary…

The telling of lies is significant in fiction written for children, and is often (though not in all cases) performed by child protagonists. Lying can be examined from at least three perspectives: philosophical, moral and aesthetic. The moral and the aesthetic are the most significant for children's literature. Morality has been subtly dealt with…

This study tested participants' preparedness to acknowledge that an object could change as a result of magical intervention. Six- and 9-year-old children and adults treated perceived and imagined objects as being equally permanent. Adults treated a fantastic object as significantly less permanent than either perceived or imagined objects. Results…

Encouraging children to create imaginary worlds through writing provides them with ways of coping with the world in which they live, gives them the satisfaction of creating order and experiencing success, and prompts their natural inclinations to plan for a better future. In addition, such planning for utopias can both improve the quality of…

Uses summaries and excerpts from ERIC documents to define fantasy, examine its attraction for children, and describe how fantasy may be selected and used in the elementary school classroom. (DD)

This supplementary insert discusses the differences between exceptionally gifted children and their more moderately gifted peers. Case studies are provided to illustrate the characteristics of exceptionally gifted children, including their tendencies toward fantasy and their ability to develop alternate realities. (CR)

Mothers' and fathers' beliefs and attitudes regarding pretend play were examined as a function of whether their children had imaginary companions and their children's gender. Parents (73 mothers, 40 fathers) were surveyed about their children's pretend play, their attitudes toward pretense, and the environments they provided for their children's…