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Books worth (re)reading

One of the pioneers of children’s folklore research on two continents, America and Australia, Dorothy Howard wrote only two books. Their publication is separated by 12 years, yet their focus and perspective are similar. Dorothy’s World: Childhood in Sabine Bottom 1902–1910 is Howard’s detailed, evocative and insightful account of the first 8 years of her life in a small farming community in Sabine Bottom, East Texas; a large section is devoted to play. Pedro of Tonala is a modest and perceptive exploration of the life of a young Mexican boy growing up in a pottery village in that country; more than a third of the book is devoted to play. Dorothy’s World is a work of memory enriched by decades of study and experience. Pedro is the beneficiary of even longer reflection on the nature and characteristics of childhood and children’s play, based on research undertaken in Howard’s retirement and not published (self-published) until her old age. What distinguishes these two books from the bulk of Howard’s research and writing (she wrote a number of journal articles) is not their recognition of the significance of play in children’s lives – that was a feature of her work from her time as a school teacher in East Texas in the 1920s – but their focus on an individual child in the context of family and community. These two books are in a sense her scholarly bookends, enclosing a lifetime of exploration of children’s lore and language that encompassed masses of children in the USA and Australia. As she wrote in the Introduction to Pedro: