Toys and Communication

Description

There are few scholarly books about toys, and even fewer that consider toys within the context of culture and communication. Toys and Communication is an innovative collection that effectively showcases work by specialists who have sought to examine toys throughout history and in many cultures, including 1930’s Europe, Morocco, India, Spanish art of the 16th-19th centuries. Psychologists stress the importance of the role of toys and play in children’s language development and intellectual skills, and this book demonstrates the recurrent theme of the transmission of cultural norms through the portrayal, presentation and use of toys. The text establishes the role of toy and play park design in eliciting particular forms of play, as well as stressing the child’s use of toys to ‘become’ more adult. It will be beneficial for courses in education, developmental psychology, communications, media studies, and toy design. Front Matter ....Pages i-xix Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Toys and Communication: An Introduction (Jeffrey Goldstein)....Pages 3-13 The End of Play and the Fate of Digital Play Media: A Historical Perspective on the Marketing of Play Culture (Stephen Kline)....Pages 15-32 Toys: Between Rhetoric of Education and Rhetoric of Fun (Gilles Brougère)....Pages 33-46 A Toy Semiotics, Revisited (David Myers)....Pages 47-60 Front Matter ....Pages 61-61 Age Differences in the Use of Toys as Communication Tools (Amanda Gummer)....Pages 63-73 LMNOBeasts™: Using Typographically Inspired Toys to Aid Development of Language and Communication Skills in Early Childhood (Todd Maggio, Kerri Phillips, Christina Madix)....Pages 75-88 Front Matter ....Pages 89-89 Images of Toys in Spanish Art (15th–19th Centuries): Iconographic Languages (Oriol Vaz-Romero Trueba, Michel Manson)....Pages 91-115 Communication in Moroccan Children’s Toys and Play (Jean-Pierre Rossie)....Pages 117-136 Dincs as Worldviews: Things that Communicate a Mind (Koumudi Patil)....Pages 137-152 Holocaust War Games: Playing with Genocide (Suzanne Seriff)....Pages 153-170 Working Class Children’s Toys in Times of War and Famine. Play, Work and the Agency of Children in Piraeus Neighborhoods During the German Occupation of Greece (Cleo Gougoulis)....Pages 171-195 Can Toy Premiums Induce Healthy Eating? (Carla Ferreira, Luísa Agante)....Pages 197-213 You Are What You Eat: Toying with the Process of Becoming (Mariah Wade)....Pages 215-231 Front Matter ....Pages 233-233 Work and Play in a Theme Park (Luísa Magalhães)....Pages 235-253 Design for Rebellious Play (Lieselotte van Leeuwen, Mathieu Gielen)....Pages 255-274 Hong Kong PolyPlay: An Innovation Lab for Design, Play, and Education (Rémi Leclerc)....Pages 275-300 Back Matter ....Pages 301-309