6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic Toys, Classic Text, Classy Production, December 23, 2009
This review is from: Classic Toys of the National Toy Hall of Fame: Celebrating the Greatest Toys of All Time! (Hardcover)
Previous reviews have aptly and admiringly captured the features of this glorious book that will delight and inform readers of every generation (and viewers, for the illustrations and photography are beautifully selected and rendered). The book's topic, expressed in its subtitle, is "A celebration of the greatest toys of all time." It is hard to conceive of a book better designed to make such a celebration satisfying. I read a book more often than I run my dishwasher, and this one was one of the best I've read in years.
One reason for its success is that the subtitle's implicit claim--that the book is has indeed identified which toys are "the greatest"--is reasonably assured. It's published by the Strong Museum of Play, one of the nation's biggest history museums and the premier repository of toys. Under its auspices empaneled experts regularly refine criteria and referee objects for inclusion to Strong's National Toy Hall of Fame. At first glance the overjoyed reader might consider ranking superfluous and methods of selection academic, but ultimately they help insure that the toys treated in "Classic Toys" are the ones most readers will most fondly recall.
The key and related reason for the book's achievement is the author's ability to enhance our recollections by bringing to his treatments of each toy his remarkable understanding of the social, economic, cultural and material contexts within which these toys where invented, evolved, and played with. Because Scott Eberle, vice president for interpretation at Strong, seems sympathetically to intuit the reasons the reader has come to this book and because he imparts his considerable, concealed erudition with exceptional wit and fine writing, the entertained reader scarcely notices she has been gifted with an appreciable education in American social history and the latest scientific insights into the psychology of play. Indeed, while the book's topics are toys, the subject matter is really play--and that is why the book will hold such fascination for the reader.
Don't let the analytical tone of this review deflect your attention from the book's pure delight. When I wasn't smiling as I read, I was laughing out loud. Let me briefly quote, for example, Eberle's treatment of Joseph Merlin's invention of roller skates. Speaking of inventors in general and then of Merlin in particular, the author writes: "Inventors are a quirky lot, no less then than now. If an idea propels them, they'll ignore obstacles and hardships, stopping at nothing to perfect their brainstorm. The problem with Merlin's skates was that they stopped at nothing."
"Classic Toys" is itself a toy, an instrument capable of eliciting endless games of nostalgia and play of memory. Reading Eberle's treatment of the many uses of the Radio Flyer, I recalled my father's recollection of his childhood chore during Prohibition of delivering hooch (his father had been a whiskey blender in the old country) in his little red wagon. And I'll swear the photographic image on page 84 of the circa-1955 Duncan Jeweled Tournament Yo-yo is a picture of my lost treasure, right down to the scuff marks.
The book smells good too.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Greatest Toys of All Time!, December 22, 2009
This review is from: Classic Toys of the National Toy Hall of Fame: Celebrating the Greatest Toys of All Time! (Hardcover)
The next best thing to being a kid again might be recapturing the memories of childhood play through this artfully written and beautifully photographed book. Like the toys it features, there is no right way to enjoy it. Toy narratives are organized by year of induction into the National Toy Hall of Fame but I took my own route, reaching as far back as my memory goes to the rocking horse. As a kid my only goal was to see if I could ride it fast enough to tip it over. In Classic Toys of the National Toy Hall of Fame, author Scott Eberle fills me in on the details kids don't need to know. Weaving cultural history with humor, he sets each toy in the context of the time it was developed and traces its story through the years. I learn that my rocking horse is on the same family tree as wooden horses played with by children three-thousand years ago, that it helped me develop balance, and soothed my developmental need for motion. As Eberle points out, whether it's the rocking horse, the skate board, or Tinker Toys, developmental benefits like these are the dividend rather than the object of children's play.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beutifully written, December 22, 2009
This review is from: Classic Toys of the National Toy Hall of Fame: Celebrating the Greatest Toys of All Time! (Hardcover)
I am in the toy business and a National Toy Hall of Fame voter so I was particulalry interested in the book, "Classic Toys of the National Toy Hall of Fame." I am, as many of us are, familiar with all of these toys. They are classics.
What delighted me was Scott's writing which is at times poetry. Here is his prose in describing Crayola Crayons: "The blue sky; the yellow sun (with stylized rays radiating); the green grass; the brown horse peeking from its rred barn; all these filled in crayon drawings by countless millions."
Now let's put it in a poetic format:
The blue sky
The yellow sun (with stylized rays radiating)
The green grass
The brown horse peeking from its red barn
All these filled in crayon drawings by countless millions
The pictures are fantastic but with writing like this they are sometimees besides the point.
Wonderful, wonderful job.
Richard Gottlieb
USA Toy Experts
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