Playing Their Way into Literacies

Karen Wohlwend provides a new framework for rethinking the boundaries between literacy and play, so that play itself is viewed as a literacy practice along with reading, writing, and design. Through a variety of theoretical lenses, the author presents a portrait of literacy play that connects three play groups: the girls and, importantly, boys, who played with Disney Princess media; ''Just Guys'' who used design and sports media to make a boys-only space; and a group of children who played teacher with big books and other school texts. These young children ''play by design''--using play as a literacy to transform the texts that they read, write, and draw--but also as a tactic to transform their relational identities in the social spaces of peer and school cultures.