Play

Learn all about mealtime by mixing and matching foods in this interactive board book From sushi to watermelon to tacos, there are so many foods for young ones to learn about This clever novelty book is comprised of four mini board books, each making up a quarter of the plate. Mix and match the four sets of pages to make healthy food choices and create more than 4,000 mealtime combinations By playing the various games suggested in the book, readers will also be able to hone their concepts of colors and shapes by creating plates with, for example, only red foods or triangles. So much fun to play with your plate

A BEST CHILDREN’S BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times, Washington Post, New York Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Globe and Mail, Horn Book, and Boston Globe STARRED Reviews in Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, The Horn Book, School Library Journal A 2022 Best Book for Babies From Julie Flett, the beloved author and illustrator of Birdsong, comes a joyous new book about playtime for babies, toddlers, and kids up to age 7. Animals and kids love to play! This wonderful book celebrates playtime and the connection between children and the natural world. Beautiful illustrations show: birds who chase and chirp! bears who wiggle and wobble! whales who swim and squirt! owls who peek and peep! and a diverse group of kids who love to do the same, shouting: We play too! / kimêtawânaw mîna At the end of the book, animals and children gently fall asleep after a fun day of playing outside, making this book a great bedtime story. A beautiful ode to the animals and humans we share our world with, We All Play belongs on every bookshelf. This book also includes: A glossary of Cree words for wild animals in the book A pronunciation guide and link to audio pronunciation recordings

An engaging look at how mobile games are increasingly part of our day-to-day lives and the ways that we interact across real as well as digital landscapes. We often play games on our mobile devices when we have some time to kill--waiting in line, pausing between tasks, stuck on a bus. We play in solitude or in company, alone in a bedroom or with others in the family room. In Ambient Play, Larissa Hjorth and Ingrid Richardson examine how mobile gameplay fits into our day-to-day lives. They show that as mobile games spread across different genres, platforms, practices, and contexts, they become an important way of experiencing and navigating a digitally saturated world. We are digital wayfarers, moving constantly among digital, social, and social worlds.

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK "A hands-on, real talk guide for navigating the hot-button issues that so many families struggle with."--Reese Witherspoon Tired, stressed, and in need of more help from your partner? Imagine running your household (and life!) in a new way... It started with the Sh*t I Do List. Tired of being the "shefault" parent responsible for all aspects of her busy household, Eve Rodsky counted up all the unpaid, invisible work she was doing for her family -- and then sent that list to her husband, asking for things to change. His response was... underwhelming. Rodsky realized that simply identifying the issue of unequal labor on the home front wasn't enough: She needed a solution to this universal problem. Her sanity, identity, career, and marriage depended on it. The result is Fair Play: a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to divvy up chores and responsibilities. Rodsky interviewed more than five hundred men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually entails and how to get it all done efficiently. With four easy-to-follow rules, 100 household tasks, and a series of conversation starters for you and your partner, Fair Play helps you prioritize what's important to your family and who should take the lead on every chore from laundry to homework to dinner. "Winning" this game means rebalancing your home life, reigniting your relationship with your significant other, and reclaiming your Unicorn Space -- as in, the time to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting. Stop drowning in to-dos and lose some of that invisible workload that's pulling you down. Are you ready to try Fair Play? Let's deal you in.

An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

For fans of Press Here, this new interactive picture book invites readers to touch and move and "play" with the book. To start our show we need a band--maybe you can lend a hand! There are lots of ways little hands can make music. Each page of this interactive book invites readers to strum the guitar, slide the trombone, crash the cymbals, and more--no instruments required! With a delightful rhyming text and engaging illustrations, this book is full of instruments waiting to share their sounds. The only thing this band needs is YOU! Just use your imagination, turn the pages, and Play This Book! Pair with Pet This Book, another title by author Jessica Young and illustrator Daniel Wiseman that comes printed on heavy-duty card stock pages to stand up to all kinds of play!

This “engaging social history of play” explores how technology and culture have shaped toys, games, and leisure—and vice versa (Choice). In this romp through the changing landscape of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American toys, games, hobbies, and amusements, technology historian Carroll Pursell poses a simple but interesting question: What can we learn by studying the relationship between technology and play? From Playgrounds to PlayStation explores how play reflects and drives the evolution of American culture. Pursell engagingly examines the ways in which technology affects play and play shapes people. The objects that children (and adults) play with and play on, along with their games and the hobbies they pursue, can reinforce but also challenge gender roles and cultural norms. Inventors—who often talk about “playing” at their work, as if motivated by the pure fun of invention—have used new materials and technologies to reshape sports and gameplay, sometimes even crafting new, extreme forms of recreation, but always responding to popular demand. Drawing from a range of sources, including scholarly monographs, patent records, newspapers, and popular and technical journals, the book covers numerous modes and sites of play. Pursell touches on the safety-conscious playground reform movement, the dazzling mechanical innovations that gave rise to commercial amusement parks, and the media’s colorful promotion of toys, pastimes, and sporting events. Along the way, he shows readers how technology enables the forms, equipment, and devices of play to evolve constantly, both reflecting consumer choices and driving innovators and manufacturers to promote toys that involve entirely new kinds of play—from LEGOs and skateboards to beading kits and videogames.

Why technology is most transformative when it is playful, and innovative spatial design happens only when designers are both tinkerers and dreamers. In Urban Play, Fábio Duarte and Ricardo Álvarez argue that the merely functional aspects of technology may undermine its transformative power. Technology is powerful not when it becomes optimally functional, but while it is still playful and open to experimentation. It is through play--in the sense of acting for one's own enjoyment rather than to achieve a goal--that we explore new territories, create new devices and languages, and transform ourselves. Only then can innovative spatial design create resonant spaces that go beyond functionalism to evoke an emotional response in those who use them. The authors show how creativity emerges in moments of instability, when a new technology overthrows an established one, or when internal factors change a technology until it becomes a different technology. Exploring the role of fantasy in design, they examine Disney World and its outsize influence on design and on forms of social interaction beyond the entertainment world. They also consider Las Vegas and Dubai, desert cities that combine technology with fantasies of pleasure and wealth. Video games and interactive media, they show, infuse the design process with interactivity and participatory dynamics, leaving spaces open to variations depending on the users' behavior. Throughout, they pinpoint the critical moments when technology plays a key role in reshaping how we design and experience spaces.