Playing With Stuff: Outrageous Games With Ordinary Objects - Softcover

Ferry Piekart; Lars Deltrap

Softcover

ISBN 10: 192913262X ISBN 13: 9781929132621

Publisher: Kane Miller Book Pub, 2004

Synopsis

Describes games that children can make and play, using ordinary objects found around the house.

About this title

About the Author

Ferry Piekart has written articles and stories for children's magazines in the Netherlands, as well as contributed fiction and non-fictin for textbooks. Playing with Stuff is his first children's book. Lars Deltrap illustrates magazines, newspapers, children's books and educational material. In 2000, he was awarded the Incentive Prize from the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts.

From the Inside Flap

Once your parents see what fun you're having, once they start to notice what absolutely crazy things you're doing with ice cubes, slices of cheese and the remote control, well, they might just try and get this book for themselves and their friends. Don't give it up! This book is for you, not for grown-ups. Tell them to get their own!

Reviews

Grade 5-8–The premise of this slim volume is that game playing should be inventive. The author often derides "boring" and "ordinary" pastimes and makes wry comments about parents. All 34 games are played with or made from items generally found around the house like bottle caps, pieces of cheese, old calendars, soda cans, sliced-up plastic pop containers, straws, furniture, and old toys. Some of the ideas are quite creative; others have potential for creating problems. For example, "Story Boardy" requires that toilet paper be unrolled throughout the entire house. Players are to draw lines and write instructions with magic markers on the squares. Hopefully, this "board" is not created on pale-colored carpets. Quirky drawings accompany the activities. Unfortunately, the small-size type is difficult to read, especially when printed on a colored background.–Kathryn Kosiorek, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Brooklyn, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gr. 3-5. Originally published in the Netherlands, this sturdy, large-format paperback describe games that children can play with everyday materials such as plastic cups, bottle caps, furniture, and umbrellas. While not every activity lives up to the descriptor "outrageous," kids will find plenty of zany, original ideas here. Story Boardy uses people as playing pieces in a board game on a monumental scale. After rolling their dice, the players move along a "board" made by unwinding a roll of toilet paper through every room in the house and writing instructions for the people who land on certain squares. Frozen Towers involves building with ice cubes, which grow increasingly slick and uncooperative as the game progresses. Given the quirky humor of the presentation, just reading about the games can be fun. Colorful, droll artwork adds to the book's offbeat charm. A rousing, original presentation for those who want to play outside the box. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Kane Miller Book Pub
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 192913262X
• ISBN 13: 9781929132621
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 48