Play as Engagement and Communication

Book excerpt: A multidisciplinary and varied perspective on play, Play as Engagement and Communication continues the stimulating and informative volumes in the Play and Culture Studies series. Students, play scholars, and play practitioners will gain information from groundbreaking studies, philosophical treatises, and in-depth reviews of current knowledge on child-child, child-adult, and child-animal play. Play and Culture Studies is the main publication of The Association for the Study of Play. Volume 10 includes such topics as student experiences with child play in hospitals, ethnographic studies of preschool play, and the connection between children and animals. The primary focus of the papers in this volume is to reflect on the close relationship between play and the process of engaging and communicating with others in different contexts.