The Boy on the Beach: Building Community through Play »

Vivian Gussin Paley worked for nearly forty years as a preschool and kindergarten teacher and is the author of thirteen books about young children, including, most recently, A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play.

Four-year-old Eli plays alone at the shore, inventing dramas out of sand and water. He is Builder, Fireman, Protector, and Scout, overcoming waves and conquering monsters. Enter Marianne and doll, Mother and Baby, eager to redefine Eli as a good father and homesteader. Their separate visions intertwine in a search for a common ground on which howling wolves and butterfly sisters can learn to understand and need one another.

What can the richly imagined, impressively adaptable fantasy world of these children tell us about childhood, development, education, and even life itself? For fifty years, teacher and writer Vivian Gussin Paley has been exploring the imagery, language, and lore of young children, asking the questions they ask of themselves.

In The Boy on the Beach she continues to do so, going deeper into the mystery of play as she follows Eli and Marianne through the kindergarten year, finding more answers and more questions. How does their teacher, Mrs. Olson, manage to honor and utilize the genius of play to create an all-inclusive community in which boys and girls like each other and listen to each other’s stories? Why is Paley’s fellow teacher Yu-ching in Taiwan certain that her children pretend to be kittens in order to become necessary to the group? And why do teachers in London see their childrens’ role-playing as the natural end to loneliness in the school community?

Rich with the words of children and teachers themselves, The Boy on the Beach is vintage Paley, a wise and provocative appreciation of the importance of play and enduring curiosity about the nature of childhood and the imagination.

Publishers Weekly

Looking deeply into the "why" and "how come" of children at play, author and long-time preschool/kindergarten teacher Paley (A Child's Work) presents a series of contemplative conversations (with the reader, fellow educators and herself) that use her work with spontaneous and guided theatrical play to demonstrate the value of narrative to education, intellectual development, and mental well-being. While searching for deeper meaning in the business of child's play, Paley has developed a process for theatrically staging students' own stories, and "finding the metaphor in the moment" in order to guide play toward satisfying closure; chronicling her classroom visits to share her process with other educators, her methods prove highly illustrative. Paley explains how people-and not just children-play in order to find characters who represent them, place emotional events in recognizable context, demonstrate their own usefulness, and create common memories for later discussion. Paley also cites interesting literary references throughout, and includes illuminating correspondence between educators. Parents and teachers alike will gain insight from Paley's contemplative, creative approach to play.
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Preface

1 The Boy on the Beach

2 Letters from Taiwan

3 Hurricanes and Howling Wolves

4 Letters

5 A Lonely Wolf

6 Letters

7 Stanley Is Here

8 Letters

9 Baby Unicorns and Glue Fairies

10 Bad Stuff

11 More Chaos: Old Person on Fire!

12 Letters

13 Moving Rocks

14 The Ocean and the Island

15 Letters

16 Almost a Day at the Beach

17 We Together Have a Friendship

18 Stanley's Fish

19 Making Scenes