Playing Jacks in Government school playground, Melbourne, 1954.
Source: Australian Children's Folklore Collection, Museum Victoria
Museum Victoria launches playful publication.
In 1954 eminent US children’s folklorist Dr Dorothy Howard came to Australia as an American Fulbright scholar to study Australian children's folklore.
Providing a rare insight into folklore during this period, her work is now the subject of a book published by Museum Victoria, entitled Child’s Play: Dorothy Howard and the Folklore of Australian Children.
Travelling across Australia, Dr Howard meticulously documented children’s games, rhymes and riddles, wherever she observed the young at play. Noting local customs, she compared them to those of earlier days in Australia, linking them to play traditions in other parts of the world.
Returning to the US she wrote a series of remarkable articles, describing her findings and reflecting on their significance.
Fifty years later, her work remains startlingly modern. Detailed, humorous and perceptive, it provides a radical perspective on the interaction between a society’s economic structure, social mores and ideology, and the lives of its children.
Child’s Play: Dorothy Howard and the Folklore of Australian Children
Essays by Dorothy Howard, June Factor, Kate Darian-Smith and Brian Sutton-Smith
RRP $24.95
Published by Museum Victoria, May 2005