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concerned with children’s lives dedicate
a sustained effort to understanding andrecognizing play and its central placein children’s holistic development andwell-being. Waters-Davies provides a
guidebook for those who are interested
in accomplishing this ambitious goal, notonly for students of play and their professors, but for everybody who intends toadvocate for play.
—Bengi Süllü, City University of New York,New York, NY

The Handbook ofDevelopmentally Appropriate
Toys
Doris Bergen, ed.
New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021.
Foreword, preface, introduction, about
the authors. 302 pp. $75.00 paper.
ISBN: 9781475849202
This book is the result of a well-coordinated encyclopedic effort to overview andengage with the many forms and shapesthat toys take (today and in the past) andwith their possible effects on child development. The work of its numerous authors
is well coordinated, applying similar structures and looking through similar lenses ata vast array of playful objects that sometimes exceed what we would traditionallycall “toys.” The product of this effort is asort of “Doomsday book” of toys that withvery few exceptions lists the many different objects that children can engage playfully. From this perspective, Doris Bergen’sbook is a true handbook, both in style andcontent. The writing is simple and linear,generally devoid of obscure academic
jargon and oriented toward a wide audience of teachers and educators who mightwant to consult the book for practicalmatters, rather than for scientific inquiry.
The authors skillfully combine both scientific research (especially in pedagogy
and developmental psychology) and theirextensive lived experience as educators.
The book is structured in chapters,
each focusing (with the exception of theintroductory and concluding ones) ona different kind of toy, about which theauthors list possible types, recall its history, discuss its appropriateness for different ages and genders, note its adaptability
for children with special needs, summarize the main research trends about it, andfinally provide recommendations. For thisreason, more than a book to be read fromthe first page to the last, the Handbookof Developmentally Appropriate Toys is abook to keep in one’s library and to consult
when designing a new educational activity
or when information on a particular toy
is needed.
The structure of the book itself offers
an interesting contribution, as the very
construction of its chapters presents asort of typology of toys. There are chaptersthat define sets of toys based on what theyrepresent (replicas of kitchen objects, ofworkshop and crafting tools, of vehicles, ofpeople—that is, dolls and puppets), basedon the actions they allow children to do(construction blocks, riding toys, climbing
toys, throwing toys, musical toys, wearable
toys—i.e., dress-up clothes), or based on
the actions they do themselves (flying toys,
such as airplanes, kites, and drones). Other
sets are defined around cultural production types (Indigenous toys), or the types

Book Reviewsof technologies involved (technologicallyaugmented). Finally, there are sets ofobjects that would not be traditionallydefined as toys but that have an importantrole in child activities and development,such as objects used for science (microscopes, chemistry kits, and the like),books (especially, but not only, pop-upbooks), crayons (and art in general), andboard games.
The list of toys discussed is quite comprehensive—only two major categories
seem to be missing. The first is role-playing games. While they are not properly
toys (but certainly they are board games,
a category present in the book), the current popularity in education of games suchas Dungeons & Dragons would have madethem an interesting addition.
The other missing category is war toys.
Although some toy soldiers are mentioned
in other categories, the absence of weapons
replicas next to vehicles, household items,and tools is noteworthy. Their absence
might be due to a question about theirdevelopmental appropriateness, a question
raised in the first chapter of the book.
This choice to exclude war toys, however, is unfortunate, because a more extensive engagement of how and when suchtoys might actually foster development
is key to a more critical approach to thewhole concept of developmental appropriateness. For example, in a rather cleverpiece titled “Letter to My Son” Umberto
Eco (1993) argues for the importance of(well-directed) war play to developing an
historical and political conscience. Toys,
he argues, are not play, but an invitation toplay. Children, then, will add meaning toit, create situations, initiate dialectics. Toyplay, he argues, does not entail necessarilya passive reception of the values containedin the toy. Children are able to negotiatethem and to reach their own conclusions.
Children’s agency, however, seems
to be partially absent from this book.
Children and their development are thefocus of the attention of adults, of course,and often the subjects of their studies, allaiming at helping and nurturing youngsters. But the way children reappropriate
their toys and negotiate their meanings isoften overlooked. There are, indeed, someacknowledgments that the way children
play is often much less sanitized thanadults might hope. Even, for example, themost innocent doll can face torture andhanging at the hands of her young owner.
That is why, in the end, the appropriateness of toys also depends on the appropriateness of their use and why play is also
known sometimes to be mischievous, liberating, subversive, and even cruel.
Additionally, as the handbook correctly points out, the very concept ofappropriateness is a complex one. Whatis appropriate for a young child? Different cultures and times will produce very
different answers to this question basedon all sorts of considerations, including
gender. Cultural and religious taboos areoften reflected in the way toys are designed
and marketed, and sometimes banned ordestroyed, as in the case of Barbie dollsin Iranian bonfires. The current protests
in Iran, however, show vividly how positions about modesty and the freedom of
Iranian women to choose their attire arepolarized. Not only the body of womenthen, but also the body of dolls becomesa cultural “battlefield” on which we canwitness a clash of values and ideologies,
as well as of different conceptions of child-113

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P L AYhood and education. The appropriatenessof toys, far from being a technical feature,
emerges as profoundly political, something fundamentally socially constructed.
The Handbook of Developmentally
Appropriate Toys, then, should not beread by educators as a recipe book, withsimple instructions for one-size-fits-all
educational solutions. We should readit, instead, as an atlas, which offers us
detailed maps and relevant data of thevast territory that is the world of toys. It
is a tool that contains suggestions, recommendations, and examples. But, ultimately, it delegates to our own contextual
judgment and expertise the difficult taskof deciding what criteria define appropriateness and what approaches are able
to encourage forms of developmentallyappropriate play.
—Mattia Thibault, Tampere University,Tampere, Finland
Two Wheels Good: The History
and Mystery of the BicycleJody Rosen
New York: Crown, 2022. Prologue,introduction, acknowledgments, notes,
photo credits, and index. 338 pp. $28.99,
hardcover. ISBN: 9780804141499
As much as we include the bicycle in ournostalgic recollections of fun and youth,
for the past two centuries this contraption has played—and still plays—a majorrole in the practical activities of people of
all ages and all places. As Jody Rosen, apop culture and music critic whose works
have appeared in the New York Times
Magazine, New Yorker, Slate, and otherpublications, informs us in this idiosyncratic but charming book, there may be
a billion automobiles worldwide, butthere are two billion bikes, and they havemostly serious functions. Though car
culture dominates most nations, Rosen
reminds us that, “Around the world, more
people travel by bicycle than by any otherform of transportation” (p. 5).
Two Wheels Good consists of a usefulhistory of the bicycle from its invention inGermany in 1817 to the present, plus an
unconnected series of chapters and essaysthat focus on uses of the bike in various
international contexts to highlight what
Rosen says are “some different stories”(p. 14). Though he does not overlook
ways bikes have evoked controversy andunfriendly reactions, especially from automobile drivers, Rosen is a true enthusiast
able to wax poetic at the mention of a twowheeled, human-powered vehicle. To him,a “bike ride is better than yoga, or wine,or weed” (p. 17). Beyond this euphoria,
Rosen identifies uses of the bicycle thatare rarely considered. For example, in one
chapter he relates that prospectors during
the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s freedthemselves from depending on costly draft
animals by riding bikes in their search
for a strike. In another chapter, he notesthat in Bhutan, one of the world’s more
mountainous countries and one where
paved roads are scarce, there nevertheless has been an official effort to makethe country a “bicycling culture.” Rosen
also introduces readers to the joys andchallenges of bike races and expeditions,such as the Bikecentennial, in which morethan four thousand riders pedaled fromAstoria, Oregon, to Yorktown, Virginia, in1976 to celebrate the two hundredth anni-