Welcome to Our Playground - (Welcome to Our . . .) by Moira Butterfield (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Find out how children play all around the world in this beautifully illustrated follow-up to Welcome to Our Table!

From basketball to board games, clapping games to climbing frames, duck duck goose to doll houses, there are so many ways to play and have fun around the world. In this fascinating book, children can learn all about the different games, toys, and playtimes around the world, as well as the playgrounds, fields, and beaches children play in, and the many different words they use when they play.

Review Quotes

K-Gr 3-Representative of most of the countries of the world and all the inhabited continents, this full-color book on play is structured by theme and includes games and forms of play from throughout the world. The themes include categories of games, location where games can be played, games that are played afterschool and play activities, such as dancing, puppets, etc. As an example, the spread devoted to tag games include selections from Pakistan, India, United Kingdom, Greece, and Italy. The cherubic children are diverse and wearing modern-day Western clothing--shorts, t-shirts, jeans, jackets, shoes--for a few pages on historical games or traditional games, the kids are seen wearing clothes appropriate to that culture. The overarching thesis of the book is that even though there are cultural differences, kids have been playing in the same manner throughout the world and throughout time. This universality of childhood, beyond borders, is introduced through transliteration of names of the games and phrases useful in playing from languages other than English. However, the transliteration does not also include the original script of the language. Of the cultures represented, most of them are the dominant one of the country, with a few inclusions, like Basque and Hmong; the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon are not named. The book includes a table of contents divided forms of play. An advance review copy had a typo with the Vietnamese phrase for "Let's play." (Starred Review)
VERDICT A must buy for every library, fostering curiosity for cultures throughout the world, and bringing balance to such Eurocentric works as the Opies' landmark titles.

About the Author

Moira Butterfield
Moira Butterfield lived in and traveled to many places s as a child, and still thinks our world is an endlessly exciting place to explore. She went on to study literature and become an author of children's nonfiction and fiction. She has written about many different subjects, from ancient treasures to future worlds, and pirates, kings, jungles, and sea monsters. Moira lives with her family in Bath, England.

Harriet Lynas
Harriet Lynas is an award-winning children's book illustrator. She has loved doodling since she could hold a pencil and decided to become an illustrator at the age of ten. After studying Visual Communication Design in college, Harriet worked as a graphic designer in the fashion industry before becoming a children's book illustrator. When she is not drawing, she enjoys cooking foods from around world and walking in the countryside. She lives with her husband and their son in Cambridge, England.