Under Deadman's Skin: Discovering the Meaning of Children's Violent Play (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: white ninja, suicide game, Baba Yaga, The Exorcist, Orthogenic School (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Katch, a teacher, relates her day-to-day observations of five- and six-year-old children, increasingly enamored and engaged in violent play-acting. Over the course of a year, Katch watched children reenacting violence from television and movies and even creating a game called Suicide. She engages parents, older children, and other teachers in her efforts to record how students are acting out violence and how to reduce violent influences on children. Katch struggles with the need to allow children to creatively vent their feelings but to curb a growing fascination with violence among some children. She examines changes in children's behavior from the index-finger guns and "bang-bang" of earlier generations to graphic and gory violence acted out on playgrounds today. Katch intersperses her classroom accounts with remembrances of sessions with the late Bruno Bettelheim, famed for teaching emotionally disturbed children at the University of Chicago. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

The five-and six-year-olds in my class have invented a new game they call suicide. I have never seen a game I hate so much in which all the children involved are so happy.

So begins Under Deadman's Skin, a deceptively simple-and compellingly readable-teachers' tale. Jane Katch, in the tradition of Vivian Paley and Jonathan Kozol, uses her student's own vocabulary and storytelling to set the scene: a class of five-and six-year-olds obsessed with what is to their teacher hatefully violent fantasy play. Katch asks, "Can I make a place in school for understanding these fantasies, instead of shutting them out?"

Over the course of the year she holds group discussions to determine what kind of play creates or calms turmoil; she illustrates (or rather the children illustrate) the phenomenon of very young children needing to make sense of exceptionally violent imagery; and she consults with older grade-school boys who remember what it was like to be obsessed by violence and tell Katch what she can do to help. Katch's classroom journey—one that leads her to rules and limits that keep children secure—is an enabling blueprint for any teacher or parent disturbed by violent children's play.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 130 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (February 18, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807031291
• ISBN-13: 978-0807031292
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #641,195 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a new slant on children and violence, January 15, 2001

By	Peter Silverman (Ashland, OR USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Under Deadman's Skin: Discovering the Meaning of Children's Violent Play (Hardcover)

This book takes a thoughtful look at how a group of kindergarten children act out in their play the violent thoughts and worries that they have. It is also about how their teacher struggles with the question of how best to help them deal with their violent play, which she finds quite upsetting. It is not preachy book, much less a quick fix on violence in America. But if you are a kindergarten teacher or a parent of kindergartener you will end up seeing your children's play in a whole new way.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful, sane view of kids, April 29, 2002

By	Sarah Houghton (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews

We adults so often overreact to children's "violent" play, but as a teacher and sometime child advocate I see how much richer and more complicated their make-believe is than what we so easily pigeonhole as "violence." Vivian Gussin Paley makes clear what such fantasy means to children, and why we should understand and participate in it, in this wonderfully readable book!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A few good insights, February 17, 2009

By	Rebecca L (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

I hate to not rave about this, because the author seems like a great teacher and observer of children, but as a parent looking to understand the reasons why my son might be interested in violence I didn't finish the book with much more than a few good insights scattered throughout the book (mainly coming from an older child she talked to.)
I found the detailed conversations of the kids to go on for way too long and ended up scanning trying to find her thoughts and observations.
I loved the way she lead the kids in her class to make their own rules for violent games and I may use some of that myself with my son, but I can see it being more helpful for a teacher than a parent.
Also, the focus on violent media was mostly about bloody scary/horror movies and didn't address cartoon violence or video-game violence. So I DID learn to avoid the blatantly scary movies (which most parents probably would anyhow) but I didn't learn much about the impact of other media.