Land of Play: Verses, Rhymes, Stories
1926
Land of Play: Verses, Rhymes, Stories
1926
Here is a world where a child can sail to foreign lands before breakfast, where the backyard becomes a kingdom, and where every ordinary moment crackles with possibility. This anthology gathers the poems and stories that have delighted generations of young readers, featuring verse from Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, and other masters who understood that childhood is its own country, one worth celebrating rather than outgrowing. The collection moves from rollicking adventure poems that send children hieing away to enchanted realms, to quieter tales of imaginative play and family life. There is something timeless about the pleasures gathered here: the thrill of make-believe, the comfort of familiar rhymes, the way a well-chosen poem can make a child feel seen. Originally compiled in 1926, this volume carries the particular warmth of an era that still believed in the sacred importance of play. Whether read aloud at bedtime or discovered by a child browsing a dusty shelf, these verses retain their power to transform an ordinary afternoon into an expedition, a treasure hunt, a story worth telling.
Editions
X-Ray
“Birds fly, fish swim, and children play.””
— Unknown
“I am not all knowing.Therefore, I will not even attempt to be.I need to be loved.Therefore, I will be open to loving children.I want to be more accepting of the child in me.Therefore, I will with wonder and awe allow children to illuminate my world.I know so little about the complex intricacies of childhood.Therefore, I will allow children to teach me.I learn my best from and am impacted most by my personal struggles. Therefore, I will join with children in their struggles. I sometimes need a refuge. Therefore, I will provide a refuge for children. I like it when I am fully accepted for the person I am.Therefore, I will strive to experience and appreciate the person of the child. I make mistakes. They are a declaration of the way I am - human and fallible. Therefore, I will be tolerant of the humanness of children. I react with emotional internalization and expression to my world of reality. Therefore, I will relinquish the grasp I have on reality and try to enter the world as experienced by the child. It feels good to be an authority, to provide answers. Therefore, I will need to work hard to protect children from me! I am more fully me when I feel safe. Therefore I will be consistent in my interactions with children. I am the only person who can live my life. Therefore, I will not attempt to rule a child's life. I have learned most of what I know from experiencing. Therefore, I will allow children to experience. The hope I experience and the will to live come from within me. Therefore, I will recognize and confirm the child's will and selfhood. I cannot make children's hurts and fears and frustrations and disappointments go away.Therefore, I will soften the blow. I experience fear when I am vulnerable.Therefore, I will with kindness, gentleness, and tenderness touch the inner world of the vulnerable child.- ””
— Unknown
“Play is the child’s symbolic language of self-expression and can reveal (a) what the child has experienced; (b) reactions to what was experienced; (c) feelings about what was experienced; (d) what the child wishes, wants, or needs; and (e) the child’s perception of self.””
— Unknown
“we were to allow the wonder of the life of a child to reach us fully and truly and to be our teacher, we would have to say: Thank you, child of man…for reminding me about the joy and excitement of being human. Thank you for letting me grow together with you, that I can learn again of what I have forgotten about simplicity, intensity, totality, wonder and love and learn to respect my own life in its uniqueness. Thank you for allowing me to learn from your tears about the pain of growing up and the sufferings of the world. Thank you for showing me that to love another person and to be with people, big or small, is the most natural of gifts that grows like a flower when we live in the wonder of life. (p. 10)””
— Unknown
“Growth is a slow process and so is change in behaviour. The therapist must be patient with the process.””
— Unknown
