W. George Scarlett, Sophie Naudeau, Dorothy Salonius-Pasternak, and Iris Ponte, Children's Play Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 2005

Excerpt

Play is fun, exciting, and mysterious. Few people spend time defining play. Yet most people recognize play when they see it. Play serves many purposes for children and can occur in all settings. Children use play to grow, build relationships, explore the world, and cope with upsets. Play is an integral part of children's lives. In this book, the authors define and examine children's play from infancy to late childhood. Revolutions in modern children's play are examined along with major setting for play and therapeutic uses for play. The authors explain that there are many practical reasons to study children's play, and they wrote this book to “explain children's play and foster in readers a deep appreciation for its complexity, its many forms, its many uses, and perhaps most of all, its complexity (p. xi).” …