From: Kathy Johnson <kmquimby>
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:27:23 -0500

I personally don't think retro books are only nostalgia, I think it's a sense that things have gone awry and that play needs to have again some of those qualities it had when we were children and that some of us who are lucky to live in small towns can still offer our children. On the other hand, how-to books are still instructions. But on the other hand, what else can you do with your "Sit Upon." I worry that fewer and fewer children have access to unbounded time to daydream, to follow their own interests and pursuits, to foster imagination and creativity that will allow them to be the inventors and innovators of tomorrow. As the npr story indicates, it's not just marketing of toys, it's parents and the education system. It certainly makes for a different childhood than my daughter had just a few short years ago.

Kathy Quimby Cambridge, VT.

At 04:40 PM 2/22/2008, James Elliott wrote:
>NPR had an article on the new 'Play' for children today. And I
>wonder how that relates to the 'retro' books coming on the market --
>perhaps a nostalgic move towards a simpler time when play wasn't
>determined by how many controllers you had for your XBox 360?
>
>http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514
Received on Fri 22 Feb 2008 04:27:23 PM CST