Toy Soldiers Research Articles

Children’s Digital and Non-Digital Play Practices with Cozmo, the Toy Robot

Children’s Digital and Non-Digital Play Practices with Cozmo, the Toy Robot

Remembering the Herero-Nama Genocide in Namibia

Remembering the Herero-Nama Genocide in Namibia

"I don't want to put my toys away"

At a public celebration of his seventieth birthday hosted by the PEN Club in London in October 1936, H. G. Wells expressed dismay at the experience. “I just hate it,” Wells told the gathering that included such luminaries as Bernard Shaw, Julian Huxley, G. B. Stern and André Maurois. “I feel like a youngster at a wonderful party sitting on the floor with all my games spread out before me. When you tell me I am 70, it is as if my nurse were coming to me to say, ‘Bertie, it is getting late—time to put those toys away.’ … I don’t want to put my toys away.” In this startling act of speculative reminiscence, Wells figures himself as a youngster and the toy-covered floor of a child as the material backdrop to his creative activities. “So few of my games are nearly finished,” he continues the metaphor. “Just now I’m playing with films. … I want to write another novel….” (“Wells at 70”). This is not the first time Wells had figured the floor as the material backdrop to creative acts of the imagination. He begins his 1911 hobby book, Floor Games, by noting that “The jolliest indoor games for boys and girls demand a floor, and the home that has no floor upon which games may be played falls so far short of happiness. It must be covered with linoleum or cork carpet, so that toy soldiers and such-like will stand up upon it.” Wells sees access to a “floor upon which games may be played” as being crucial to the creative development of young children. “Upon such a floor may be made an infinitude of imaginative games,” he writes, “not only keeping boys and girls happy for days together, but building up a framework of spacious and inspiring ideas in them for after life” (9-10). As Gene and Margaret Rinkel note, Wells based Floor Games on “lingering childhood memories” of playing with his older brother Freddie on a linoleum floor of their family home at 47 High Street, Bromley. He and Freddie would play on the floor of Atlas House “with soldiers, bricks, boards, and planks. They became captains, lord mayors, and little generals. Bertie improvised and arranged cities, railroads, buildings, seas, and boats” (Rinkel and Rinkel 118).
 This essay builds on the work of such scholars as Gene Rinkel and Margaret Rinkel and Teresa Trout to consider how Wells’ childhood gameplaying influenced his literary storytelling, and argues that we need to consider not just the toys he played with or the games he invented as a child, but also the material backdrop for these toys and games, the floor. What is interesting about the floor as an element of gameplay is that it stands both inside and outside the game. On the one hand, it is the foundation of the game, the stable ground on which gameplayers place their toys—for Wells, this meant bricks and soldiers, boards and planks, clockwork railway rolling stock and rails. The floor circumscribes the game world and stays the same while the other elements of the game are in the flux. On the other hand, the floor is a piece of mundane reality that cannot be entirely co-opted into the game because it belongs to the real world as much as to the game. The linoleum- or cork-carpeted floor keeps the game anchored in mundane reality because it is what is left when the game is packed up. As Wells whimsically concedes in Floor Games, “Occasionally, alas! it must be scrubbed—and then a truce to Floor Games” (10). Floor games involve a constant negotiation between the fantasising child who is engrossed in the game and the intervening adult who augurs the intrusion of real-world concerns into the fantastical microcosm.

The Rest Is History

The Rest Is History

The Exemplary Game: Going to War with H.G. Wells's Toy Soldiers

This article focuses upon toy soldiers and masculinity. I examine H.G. Wells's fascination with these toys in his war-gaming manuals, as well as Robert Louis Stevenson's toy soldier poems. I focus on the toy's complicity in a broad cultural fantasy of masculine embodiment that denies both corporeal pain and maturation.

From the Editor

From the Editor Lisa Rowe Fraustino (bio) In this, my first introduction to my first volume as editor of the annual, I want to begin by thanking all of our contributors, from whom I have learned more than I thought my brain could absorb. I have learned not only from the seven authors whose accepted essays appear in these pages but also from those whose work is still in the revise and resubmit (R & R) process, and even those whose work was not a fit for us—or not yet. Equally, I learned from our expert readers, whose generous attention to the work of anonymous colleagues makes every essay better, makes the journal better, makes the editor better, makes children's literature scholarship overall better, and indirectly betters children's literature itself. With no organizing theme for this open volume, I decided to order the essays chronologically based on the text sets under discussion, beginning with a classic of the White canon, Peter and Wendy. In "'[A] commotion in the firmament': The Thermodynamics of Neverland," Clayton Carlyle Tarr looks at J. M. Barrie's 1911 novelization of his 1904 play as an exemplar of how children's literature incorporated Victorian science. Peter Pan and Tinker Bell harness energy in ways that defy the physical laws of thermodynamics, a subject that Barrie studied at the University of Edinburgh. Just as the character Peter Pan never ages or dies, the thermodynamic power of storytelling allows Peter Pan to live on across generations. At the same time as Barrie staged children's play in White, patriarchal, colonialist fantasies, H.G. Wells represented nationalist masculinity through play in two little-known novels for children, Floor Games (1911) and Little Wars (1913). Chloe Flower's essay, "The Exemplary Game: Going to War with H.G. Wells's Toy Soldiers," situates these fictional war-gaming texts in British culture and the figure of the toy soldier in material history. She finds that, like the reproducible hollow toy, "the boy is a delegate for an infinitely expanding number of other, expendable male selves proceeding outward to empire and forward into England's triumphalist future." Just as children's literature has contributed to the reproduction of traditional gender roles across generations, so too has it contributed to cultural change. In "Little Miss Muffet Must Go! Mommies at Work [End Page ix] and the Radical Roots of Non-Sexist Children's Literature," Julia L. Mickenberg explores the historical impact of an early feminist picture book and discusses why it was then—and still is, to some extent—difficult to find picture book mothers working outside of the home. Eve Merriam's 1961 text was given new life in 1970 when rediscovered by the Women's Liberation movement and featured in Elizabeth Fisher's "The Second Sex, Junior Division," which Mickenberg parallels with the importance of Nancy Larrick's "The All-White World of Children's Literature." With the next essay, we skip ahead to the poststructural era, when both young adult literature and the theoretical study of it have gained influence and respect. Barbara Tannert-Smith combines topoanalysis and psychoanalysis in "'The Garden Frightens Me': Trauma, Recovery, and the Environmental Uncanny in Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now." By mapping "the traumatic route of intertextual modeling" in what Amitav Ghosh has called "the environmental uncanny," Tannert-Smith deconstructs romantic notions of landscape and human-nature entanglements in Rosoff's 2004 critically acclaimed novel about young people surviving on their own in a future World War III. J. K. Rowling's series of seven Harry Potter books came out between 1997 and 2007, and Kathryn Strong Hansen discusses the author's 2008 postscript to her Wizarding World in the next essay, "On the Margins of Harry's World: Paratext and The Tales of Beedle the Bard." Reading Rowling's footnotes placed alongside Dumbledore's in the text, Hansen argues that paratexts of the Tales undermine Rowling's expressed intent in fighting bigotry by marginalizing readers as Muggles themselves, distancing rather than fostering the connection that had made them feel included throughout the series. In recent decades, scholars have paid increasing attention to comics and graphic novels. Kai Mikkonen continues...

Militarization: A Reader ed. by Roberto J. Gonzalez et al., and: Militarized Global Apartheid by Catherine Besteman

Reviewed by: Militarization: A Reader ed. by Roberto J. Gonzalez et al., and: Militarized Global Apartheid by Catherine Besteman Leah Zani Roberto J. Gonzalez, Hugh Gusterson, and Gustaaf Houtman, eds. Militarization: A Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019. 424 pp. Catherine Besteman. Militarized Global Apartheid. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. 208 pp. I open Militarization: A Reader and find a brief editor's note explaining that the volume is the result of an initiative by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA) to oppose the militarization of anthropology.1 The editors—Roberto Gonzalez, Hugh Gusterson, and Gustaaf Houtman—are all founding members of the NCA. The table of contents includes many other NCA members, including Catherine Besteman (author of Militarized Global Apartheid), Andrew Bickford, David Price, David Vine, and Catherine Lutz. The NCA formed as an independent network of US-based anthropologists promoting an ethical, demilitarized anthropology that refuses to participate in the US Army's Human Terrain System and related projects of the war on terror.2 These scholars are building on a century-old tradition of critical anthropological engagement with the American war machine, going back to Franz Boas's (1919) indictment of American anthropologists who worked as spies during World War I. The NCA previously published The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual (2009) (a teardown of the US Army-Marine Corps's Counterinsurgency Field Manual), with an excerpt from the text appearing in the final section of the Reader. Thus, I initially thought of Militarization: A Reader as the group's unofficial next book. To my surprise, the edited collection is a very different kind of book, softer and more invitational. The introduction begins with an account of toy soldiers: a son's love of toy soldiers, his father's grief after the death of his son in war, the father who then modifies toy soldiers as a memorial to [End Page 475] his son. The volume's cover image—a GI Joe army man—can, at first, be easily mistaken for a real soldier. It's a heartrending ethnographic account of father-son relations in a militarized American society that sells war to children. The editors go on to discuss the military-industrial complex, the invention of action figures in the 1950s, as well as ongoing collaborations between the Pentagon, Paramount Pictures, and Hasbro to design new weapons systems alongside the films and toys that feature them. The gentle, empathetic introduction shies just short of an overt critique of American militarism. There is no mention of the editors' founding membership in the NCA or the organization's mandate. The editors go right up to that line and then stop. I put the book down, confused. Where are the Concerned Anthropologists? The editors bring a compelling and timely ethic of demilitarization to our discipline—one that I share. However, I would have liked the editors to explicitly disclose that ethic in the body of the work. Back in 2019, when the collection went to press, I would likely have agreed with this gentler approach. But 2020 was a crucible of a year that has made the concerns of this volume feel more urgent. Published in 2020, by comparison, Besteman's Militarized Global Apartheid is outraged and uncompromising. Amid a global pandemic, the Reader's softness now feels a bit too parental. We've grown up. The study of militarism has become more necessary and our responsibility more pressing to model ethical anthropology. We live in a world radically transformed by pervasive militarization, especially American militarization. The Reader is a much-needed cross-cultural reference for militarization in different contexts with a focus on the United States and its outsized impact on global conflict. The volume's strength is its comprehensive coverage and intersectional, multidisciplinary approach to militarization and its impacts. The edited collection is divided into 12 sections organized by theme, each section heralded by an introductory essay: Militarization and Political Economy; Military Labor; Gender and Militarism; The Emotional Life of Militarism; Rhetorics of Militarism; Militarization, Place, and Territory; Militarized Humanitarianism; Militarism and the Media; Militarizing Knowledge; Militarization and the Body; Militarism and Technology; and, lastly, Alternatives to Militarization. There are many entrances into the study of militarization, and this...

Serial Forms: The Unfinished Project of Modernity, 1815–1848. Clare Pettitt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xv+348.

<i>Serial Forms: The Unfinished Project of Modernity, 1815–1848</i>. Clare Pettitt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xv+348.

Toy soldier syndrome: A consequence of parental cognitive dissonance

Toy soldier syndrome: A consequence of parental cognitive dissonance

Plastic toy soldiers, a lost battle? – an analytical perspective

The conservation and preservation of museum collections requires a detailed understanding of their constituent materials which are often natural, synthetic or semi-synthetic polymers. The use of a wide variety of instrumental techniques can give an extraordinary amount of quality information, by delivering complementary data regarding composition and structure. This study was triggered by the Oporto Military Museum (Museu Militar do Porto) conservators who observed that a set of plastic toy soldiers dating back to the middle of the 20th century from the museum exhibition started to present severe and accelerated degradation process. With this is mind, the authors envisaged a methodology for the characterisation of these soldier toys that compromised elemental, structural and morphologic analysis, to allow the identification of polymers, their additives, and the degradation products. The methodology comprised stereoscopic microscopy and VP-SEM-EDS to recognize the micromorphology, ATR-FTIR to identify the polymer, 1H and 13C NMR to identify their additives, and micro-XRD to identify degradation products with a crystal structure. With this complementary analytical approach the composition of the toy soldiers was identified as being made of cellulose acetate plastic with triphenyl phosphate and dimethyl phthalate as major additives, and crystallyne efflorescence of triphenyl phosphate were identified as a degradation product. This methodology shows to be very adequate for a detailed characterization of plastic artefacts in museum environments.

The Land of Story-Books. Scottish Children's Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century ed. by Sarah Dunnigan and Shu-Fang Lai

Reviewed by: The Land of Story-Books. Scottish Children's Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century ed. by Sarah Dunnigan and Shu-Fang Lai Devika Mehra THE LAND OF STORY-BOOKS. Scottish Children's Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century. Edited by Sarah Dunnigan and Shu-Fang Lai. Series: ASLS Occasional Papers, 23. Scottish Literature International, 2019, 445 pages. ISBN: 978-1-908980-29-8 This book gives a glimpse into a vast array of nineteenth-century Scottish children's literature, a literary world that Sarah Dunnigan in the introduction refers to as "in part recognisable, in part unknown" (x). It explores what one understood by children's literature, the child reader, and the culture of children's books in Scotland in the nineteenth century. Focusing on the power of Scottish children's narratives and different aspects of Scottish children's writing, it highlights the role of children's literature in shaping Scottish national identity (sociocultural, historical, linguistic, spatial, and gendered). The book, divided into six sections and twenty chapters, covers different genres such as chapbooks and periodicals, folktales and fairy tales, gothic-inspired short stories and domestic realist narratives, conduct books and adventure stories, nursery verses and folk songs, and oral and written narratives. It encompasses a wide range of thematic strands, including discussions on constructions of childhood (girlhood as well as boyhood); the child reader; the publishing industry and marketing; didactic and entertaining children's literature; women writers and children's literature; the child figure and issues related to memory, loss, and death; reimagining history; space and place; Celtic revival and linguistic identity; oral and folk traditions; and, finally, literary and cultural memory and children's archives. The significance of the book lies in its inclusion of diverse voices, especially women writers of children's literature (Catherine Sinclair, Margaret Oliphant, Jessie Saxby), in the analysis of lesser-known works (Mary Gordon's fiction, Dinah Mulock Craick's Alice Learmont, Chapbook culture, Scottish verse tradition, the Finn [Fionn] and Ulster cycles), and in researching popular authors (J. M. Barrie, George MacDonald) from new perspectives. For instance, Rhona Brown's essay on "Educating the Female Child" explores the concept of the unofficial debate and the role of periodicals in constructing the female subject and the idea of female education. Linda Claridge Middup's chapter addresses the issues of didactic elements, morality, and feminine empowerment within the domestic space. The use of location and language in the construction of national identity is reiterated in the essays on Celtic revival, George MacDonald, Jessie Saxby, and Violet Jacob (chapters 6, 13, and 18). Another key thrust is the book's discussions of the role of the publishing industry and the education market in the dissemination, branding, and promotion of Scottish children's literature as well as Scottish children's writers. Essays on Robert Chambers, Thomas Nelson & Sons, and Andrew Lang's Fairy Books give an insight into the influence of publishing houses in the marketing of children's books. Anne Marie Hagen's essay on Thomas Nelson & Sons exemplifies the role of Scottish publishers in developing a connection between education, religion, and children's literature. Finally, the [End Page 92] book's examination of children's culture and its influence on national identity (Adam Kozaczka's essay on toy soldiers and the last chapter, "Children's Books in the Archive") facilitates an understanding of the material culture of Scottish childhood. The book highlights how the space of childhood incites nostalgia, yet can be political and politicized (xxi). While the scope of the book is vast and diverse, in terms of writers, texts, and the period, the common strand is its preoccupation with an analysis and establishment of a distinct Scottish children's literature and Scottish national identity. An analysis of children's book illustrations and children's magazine or childhood writing culture (Christine Orr) would have further enhanced this work. However, the entire collection of essays is an important contribution to the study of Scottish children's literature and raises crucial questions that can be taken up for further research. It opens up new avenues for research and exploration in the field of early Scottish children's writings. Devika Mehra Lecturer, Department of...

War through the eyes of the toy soldier: a material study of the legacy and impact of conflict 1880 – 1945

ABSTRACT Cast-lead toy soldiers enjoyed widespread popularity in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As such they present an excellent case study for an analysis of war through non-military narratives. This article examines a sample of sets and figures produced during the ‘golden age’ of toy soldiers, so as to ascertain how these artefacts related to military developments and what light they can shed on societal responses to conflict in this period. The figures and sets under discussion are drawn from the catalogues of the major British and German manufacturers of the period and are contextualized by the activities of the companies that produced them. This focus enables the article to compare and contrast various approaches to these artefacts and to conclude on how toy soldier production in this period became embroiled in the wider political and military conflict between the British and German empires.

Horses, toy sabers, toy soldiers—a few words about boys’ patriotic toys of the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century

Children’s toys of the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were determined by several criteria: age, gender and social background of the child. They fulfilled several basic functions: ludic, socialization/preparatory, educational and educating. Boys’ patriotic toys influenced the formation of patriotic feelings, both preparing the child for future military service, and developing a love for the history of the country.

Last Kiss The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby: An Edition of the Manuscript

Last Kiss The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby: An Edition of the Manuscript

Left Out: The Forgotten Tradition of Radical Publishing for Children in Britain 1910–1949 by Kimberley Reynolds

Reviewed by: Left Out: The Forgotten Tradition of Radical Publishing for Children in Britain 1910–1949 by Kimberley Reynolds Christopher Owen Left Out: The Forgotten Tradition of Radical Publishing for Children in Britain 1910–1949, by Kimberley Reynolds. Oxford University Press, 2016. With Left Out, Kimberley Reynolds has provided an important and interesting contribution to the study of the history of children's literature. This book responds directly to previous research on children's literature during the interwar period and to the claim that children's literature during this time was "culturally disengaged" and "apolitical" (5). Reynolds demonstrates that the very opposite of this is true. Left Out provides a clear history of writing, illustrating, translating, publishing, disseminating, and reading radical literature for children in Britain between 1910 and 1949. In her analysis, Reynolds shows that a great deal of literature for children published during this time encouraged critical thinking and provided tools for creating a more progressive future. Reynolds's definition of radical literature grounds her entire study. She argues that radical literature for children is socially progressive; promotes a more just, equal, and modern society; and works to break down stereotypical attitudes to gender, race, class, poverty, ethnicity, nationality, and childhood. She argues that while mainstream children's texts during this time construct an idealized version of childhood as separate from and superior to adulthood, radical texts focus on helping readers learn critical thinking skills. This definition, with all its breadth and specificity, contributes to both Left Out's successes and shortcomings. While Reynolds is able to provide a very thorough history of radical children's literature from this period, during my reading of this book I often thought that she overprioritizes class issues and socialism. This results in a neglect of other social identities and issues (that are included in her definition of radical literature) that could have been resolved through a more intersectional approach. The introduction to Left Out works well to explain the foundations of Reynolds's argument. She defines radical literature and places it within the context of Britain's left-wing politics, modernism and the avant-garde, and progressive education. Reynolds uses the publishing of Victor Gollancz as a case study, giving particular attention to An Outline for Boys and Girls and Their Parents, edited by Naomi Mitchison. In this case study, Reynolds not only provides a critical literary analysis of radical left-wing children's literature, but also describes in great detail [End Page 231] how this literature was published and disseminated. She concludes this analysis with an investigation into who the readers were of these radical texts, ultimately arguing that, whoever the readers were, they were given a great deal of information about their bodies, their world, and the ways they could make the future a more progressive place. Reynolds's introduction is so clear that if, like me, you are not a specialist in publishing history, the rest of this book should still be accessible. Chapter 1, "War and Peace in Radical Writing for Children," investigates literature that opposes war and criticizes politicians and those who enable military conflicts. At the beginning of the chapter, Reynolds provides a jarring image from Harry Golding and Albert Friend's War in Dolly land (A Book and A Game), which features toy soldiers lined up as a firing squad, aiming their guns at a blindfolded doll. Reynolds uses the juxtaposition of children's toys and the overly realistic image of war to exemplify her argument: radical children's literature questions the wisdom and skills of those responsible for war. Reynolds later moves on to discussing the messages of pacifism that were taught in Socialist Sunday Schools, progressive schools, and in texts like The Young Socialist. In this discussion, Reynolds analyzes texts of several different genres for a variety of different ages, concluding that these texts reflect the liberal Left idea that the cure for war is a new form of social organization. One such society that was believed to be developing into this idealized future was post-revolutionary Russia, which Reynolds mentions for a smooth transition into her next chapter. Chapter 2, "Moscow has a Plan!: Representations of the Soviet Union in Radical...

What to wear

Clothes have been a means of expressing gender for centuries. While play informs the development of creativity and dexterity, providing an essential formative role, clothes also act as objects of self-expression and identity. If a doll or toy soldier encourages a particular mode of being, so do the costumes we assume and the clothes we wear. Boys' clothes tend to veer towards more mobile and utilitarian styles, while for girls they remain restrictive, embellished and decorative. Here, Williams talks about the gendering of clothes

Toy soldiers: The armed body of Chilean students. Military instruction and shooting lessons in schools (Ca. 1880-Ca.1930)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, different actors involved in education promoted the introduction of shooting (“Tiro Escolar” or “school shooting lessons”) as a discipline to be taught in Chile’s educational system, which was established in 1928 but was not yet a large or regular operation. In analysing arguments of those who promoted this activity, this article shows shooting lessons in schools as a realm where it is possible to notice some dimensions of intentions to train Chilean children and youth through educating the body and emotions in the period under study.

The First Nutcracker, the Enchantment of International Relations, and the Franco-Russian Alliance

Despite the lively scholarly debate on the place of The Sleeping Beauty (1890) in the political and cultural history of the Franco-Russian alliance in the 1890s, the representation of international relations in the first production of The Nutcracker (1892) has so far received little attention. This representation includes the well-known series of character dances in the second act of the ballet, but also the use of French fashion from the revolutionary era to costume the party guests, the mechanical dolls, the toy soldiers, and even Prince Nutcracker. The fairy-tale world offered a frame that not only promoted the absolutist aspirations of Alexander III's regime, but also solved the symbolic challenge of a problematic alliance between republican France and tsarist Russia. The same visual repertoire informed diplomatic life: four years after The Nutcracker, in 1896, the décor for the state visit of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna in France duplicated that of the fairy-tale world on stage.

The Generation of Postmemory. Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust

The Generation of Postmemory. Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust

Toy soldiers: The armed body of Chilean students. Military instruction and shooting lessons in schools (Ca. 1880-Ca.1930)

Toy soldiers: The armed body of Chilean students. Military instruction and shooting lessons in schools (Ca. 1880-Ca.1930)