Book Reviews

Letting Play Bloom: Designing
Nature-Based Risky Play
Lolly Tai
Philadelphia, PA: Temple
University Press, 2022. Foreword,
acknowledgments, introduction,conclusion, afterword, references,illustration credits, and index. 226 pp.
$50.00, hardcover. ISBN: 9781439921791
With Letting Play Bloom: Designing
Nature-Based Risky Play, author LollyTai, a professor of landscape architecture
at Temple University, brings to the forefront her love of play and the outdoors andher scholarship about designing spaces forthe intersection of these two. Interweaving
images, architectural drawings, and text,
Lolly has organized her work throughcase studies highlighting the great diversity and detail of park designs focused on
outdoor risky play. Although written by anacademic and published by an academicpress, this book’s first impressions suggest it could sit nicely on a home coffee
table, on the desk of an urban planner ordesigner, or in the collection of a scholar.
Tai has curated an engaging tome thatshares its deep research without burdening the reader with excessive scholarly
justifications. The author surreptitiously
showcases years of the experiences of parents, children, and practitioners concerning works in outdoor play spaces. Letting
Play Bloom is short, easy to read, and apleasure to look at.
As an outdoor educator and therapist, my overall impression of Letting
Play Bloom is positive, and my critiques
regarding definitions should not undermine the aims and impact of this book.
My comments come as a reviewer outside
the discipline of architecture—Tai’s area ofexpertise—and reflect the larger systemic
challenges facing all who support outdoor
risky play and nature connections for childdevelopment.
“Nature based,” as it is used in the subtitle of Tai’s book, requires a bit of unpacking. Nature as a place—as opposed to thenature of things or wild nature—is often
thought of as untouched, or at least unaltered, by humans. Natural spaces grow anddevelop in relationship to environmental
conditions: temperatures, seasons, otherspecies (including flora and fauna), and359

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AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYnonliving things. Natural play spaces
afford endless opportunities for children
to explore adventure and risk and to create play in harmony with the natural playscape. Tai defines nature-based play inher first paragraph as occurring in theseunmanufactured places, and she evenshares a few images in her reference section of children exploring in mountainous,
off-trail settings that are risky by nature.
What she presents in this book, andwhat lies at the heart of my one minor
critique, holds that these featured playareas are facsimiles of nature-based playspaces seen in the photos tucked away inthe back of the book. How can we re-create
or reimagine wilder spaces in urban or lesswild places? Although nature provides
challenging and developmental opportunities for children through locomotion,
manipulation, and psychological andcreative exploration, the park or playground planner must produce a facsimilethat can provide similar prospects, butalso—and maybe unfortunately—meets
building codes and safety standards, onethat can withstand the foot traffic it will
see over time, especially in an urban ordensely populated area. It is in meetingthese standards that Tai’s work provides
guidance and examples to achieve the benefits of risky play. In short, my problem
is that the term “nature based” may bepartially misleading. Again though, thiscomes from understanding what intact
and naturally occurring ecosystems canoffer versus those we need to build as replicants. A couple of examples from Letting
Play Bloom may illustrate this.
Example 1: The necessity to meetbuilding codes may require pruning tree
branches up to six feet, as Tai outlines on

page 39, which, in effect, removes children’s opportunities for climbing andthereby removes one of the affordances oftrees in nature. Tai points to Ellen Beate
Sandseter’s work out of Norway. Sandseter
has identified experiencing risk, suchas climbing to heights at which a childsenses competence and challenge coming
together, and she articulates this as a developmental need. In this case, the designer
and planner must re-create height throughmanufactured obstacles such as slides, ladders, and walkways ideally to achieve, as
Tai shows, the same child developmental
goals. The result is a space that can beinsured and that an architect and engineer’s firm can sign off on as meeting
predetermined safety standards. The treeitself, if climbed before pruning, could
offer nature-based risky play in which theperception of risk at height could be experienced by a child climbing a tree, which
could also be vicariously experienced byother children watching.
Example 2: Hard or durable surfaces
provide access, ease of maintenance, aesthetics, and direction (as in where to go),thereby also possibly reducing the explorations in which a child might engage inthe space. But natural spaces change overtime, and the way is not always clear. I may
be getting into the weeds on definitions
here, but I question whether this is naturebased risky play, or more accurately, risky
play outdoors in manufactured nature-likesettings. The parks featured throughout
the book are all aimed at keeping kids
close to nature, in ways dictated by physical, political, economic, and social variables. This is the burden of trying to allow
kids today the opportunity to experience
exploration in wild nature, perhaps like

Book Reviews

that in which many of the adults reading
this book engaged as children. It is noteasy to re-create. I listened and laughedwhen a playground developer, years ago,in Canada, explained the expensive engineering and certification process his company completed to have logs, rocks, andstreams certified to meet national safety
standards. On this front, Tai’s book has
set a path for those who have not yet seen
the way through the policy and standards
forest. Follow along, learn from the casestudies, and get excited about the learning and growth opportunities for children.
Most impressive for the reader are
the book’s layout and the easy-to-follow
narratives of the development and management of five adventurous playgrounds
across three nations. The selection ofplaygrounds featured help demonstrate
the range of opportunities for designers and developers to build for idealized
outcomes: physical challenges, risky play,creative and constructive elements, exploration, and the levels of supervision andparent involvement that may be needed.
Is there a tree fort already built, or would
your city by-laws allow for moving parts
that kids may use to build their own structure? Will water be involved and interacting with other materials (think streams,mud, and messiness), or are there shrubs
along walkways to keep everyone on thedurable surfaces and out of the naturalspaces? This book sets up readers well
to begin answering many questions thatwill arise and helps in decision making.
As these case studies show, some areas
will allow freedom for nature-based playand some will replicate natural elements
to represent nature. Tai also provides key
references throughout the text for thoseresearch areas readers may be most interested in exploring.
Ultimately, Letting Play Bloom provides a refreshing spin on the intersection of child development and outdoor
play and should serve to inspire, instruct,and stimulate readers to bring nature andrisk into child play spaces.
—Nevin J. Harper, University of Victoria,
British Columbia, CanadaDoll
Maria Teresa Hart
New York: Bloomsbury, 2022.
Introduction, conclusion,acknowldgments, and index. 176 pp.
$14.95 paper. ISBN: 9781501380860
In summer 2023, in response to the Barbie
movie, the American cultural zeitgeist took
a sudden interest in the deeper meaning of
our unofficial national doll. The world wasbuzzing with curiosity about who designs
and sells the iconic doll, what kinds of play
it invites, the gender identities encoded
in its molded body, and its impact on thesocialization of children. Maria Teresa
Hart’s Doll, a 2022 addition to Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series, also begins
with Barbie and then takes the reader ona journey to explore these same questions
about other dolls of the past, present, andfuture. Each chapter examines the history
and sociocultural implications of a typeof doll: porcelain bisque, American Girl,celebrity look-a-likes, and virtual avatars.
Peppered with personal anecdotes andpunctuated by a critical feminist lens, Hart
provides a highly accessible introduction

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