Author Description

This lighthearted, anecdotal, but substantial book takes readers on a journey through the toy landscape to show how, as America changed from a rural to an urban society, toys came out of the fields and into the homes and streets; how they stayed conceptually the same, although their outward forms changed; how, in the microcosm of childhood, they expressed and reflected the adult world of which they were a part.Going as far back as ancient Egypt and as far forward as the action figures of today, Andrew McClary delves into the genealogies of eight toy "families": tops, marbles, propeller toys, noisemakers, hoops, dolls, shooters, and blocks. He shows how social changes - the Industrial Revolution, advances in education, increased wealth and leisure - led to the kit toys, tournament toys, organized play, and toy marketing of today. Contemporary issues such as toy safety, "boy" toys versus "girl" toys, and toys and violence are here too - along with the homemade slingshots, road tar gum, and cucumber "poopie" dolls of a less self-conscious era. The playthings of childhood are "us," and if we look carefully, as McClary shows, we can read in them our own history.