W. George Scarlett is senior lecturer and deputy chair of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. He received a BA from Yale University, an MDiv from the Episcopal Divinity School, and a PhD (in developmental psychology) from Clark University. He has authored or co-authored six books and co-edited the Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development (published by SAGE). His second most recent book was Approaches to Behavior and Classroom Management (also published by SAGE). He has been the lead author or co-author of chapters in The Handbook of Child Psychology and The Handbook of Life-Span Development – both leading resources for professionals conducting research on children and adolescents. In addition, he has published numerous articles on a variety of subjects pertaining to children, including articles on behavior management, and he has been on the research teams of several internationally known leaders, including Ed Zigler at Yale (early research on Head Start) and Howard Gardner at Harvard (early research on multiple intelligences). He has served as a consultant to the Cambridge, Somerville, and Lowell Head Start systems in Massachusetts and directed a residential summer camp for children with emotional and behavioural disorders. Currently, he is a regular consultant to reporters and news agencies, communicating to the general public best practices for raising and educating children and youth. At Tufts, in addition to his administrative duties as the department’s deputy chair, he teaches courses on approaches to problem behavior, children’s play, and spiritual development, and writes a column, “Kids These Days,” for Tufts Magazine.
Enlivened with illustrations and case studies, this book gives an exceptionally readable account of the development of children's play from infancy through to adolescence. It also branches out to include humour, sports, and modern developments in electronic games, as well as uses of play in therapy. It will be a great resource for practitioners and play workers, and indeed for parents who wish to be informed of current thinking and research' - Peter K Smith, Goldsmiths College, University of London George Scarlett and colleagues' treatment of play is both original and provocative. Unlike most previous expositions on play, they consider not only the social and cognitive dimensions of play but also its aesthetic nature. The treatment of youth sport was especially impressive. This is a "must read" for students of play' - Anthony D Pellegrini, Professor Department of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota- Twin Cities Campus This is the most clearly self aware of the several current works in the psychology of children's play. It has the unique worth of being unusually comprehensive with respect to play stages, gender differences, private lives, neighborhoods, humour, collections, video games, responses to stress and the uses of recess and play therapy. I particularly liked the demonstration of the continuing role of make believe from early childhood on into the theatric, literary and electronic foci of adolescence. These four authors are to be congratulated for having brought us as students and as parents an unusually readable text' - Brian Sutton-Smith, Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania Children's Play combines uncompromising scholarship with fresh, joyful prose. By looking at both the structure and content of play the authors help us understand the developmental significance of this complex way of being in the world. Each chapter contains exactly the topics we want to study and adds surprises that counter the folk-psychology of today. Children's Play does more than overview the research literature; it engenders new thinking' - George E Forman, Emeritus Professor, Child and Family Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts Play is a surprisingly complex and significant phenomenon in the lives of children everywhere. Children's Play looks at the many facets of play and how it develops from infancy through late childhood. Authors W George Scarlett, Sophie Naudeau, Dorothy Salonius-Pasternak, and Iris Ponte take a broad approach to examining how children play by including a wide variety of types of play, play settings, and play media. The book also discusses major revolutions in the way today's children play, including changes in organized youth sports, children's humour, and electronic play. Children's Play addresses diversity throughout the book and explores play on the topics of gender, disabilities, socioeconomic class, and culture. Features: broad scope. Covers various age groups from infancy through pre-adolescence and includes topics often missing from books on children's play, e.g, restorative play. discussion of current revolutions in play. Provides full coverage of topics such as electronic play and organized youth sports. treatment of culture. Rather than segregate culture into a single chapter, culture and diversity issues run throughout the book to give students a deep understanding of how pervasively culture shapes children's play. Discussions include considerations of age changes in how children play, gender differences, socioeconomic class differences, differences based on disabilities, cultural differences, and typical versus atypical settings and environments. helpful pedagogy. To assist student study, chapters include chapter-opening outlines, boxed material to amplify key points with memorable real-life examples, a socratic style that punctuates the text by posing new topics in the form of questions to be explored, a summary section along with a list of key words, names, and ideas, and a rich illustration program with figures and photos of children in various play settings.
