Art and Play, a book for middle-school readers that could also function as a text book, presents the stories of six 20th-century artists, their art and how they use play in their work.

Young adults, ages 11 through 14, will benefit from Art and Play. The child may find the book while browsing at a bookstore, in a school or community library while researching a project, or in the young adult section of an art museum gift shop. A teacher or adult might also recommend the book to the reader. They young adult may come from a family who is open to new ideas. Such a student may be inquisitive and often comes up with creative ideas outside of traditional thought models. Art and Play provides creative young readers with a model of lifelong learning and how to seek additional information. Play is a familiar concept to young adults and can easily connect them with artists, whose work and ideas may often be hard to grasp. For many artists, play is childhood work and the artists’ artwork is a continuation of their childhood play. They draw from a foundation of interests developed in childhood. By using a young adult book format, the stories will introduce readers to distant teachers, a term identified by Vera John-Steiner in Notebooks of the Mind. By exploring the artists’ childhood interests, the middle-school reader can begin to identify a similar path that may inspire them to start challenging or interesting projects even outside of the field of art. Their stories serve as a model for young readers to develop their own methods and practices, which can be applied to any topic of interest. The stories also present strong personalities to model behavior during a transitory period for the reader.

Each chapter contains a brief biography followed by suggested activities that provide opportunities for readers to become more involved with the artists’ signature styles. The activities serve as a starting point for the readers to take the artists’ experience and make them their own. Lists of resources follow, complimenting the stories and providing a method of further explorations. These lists encourage readers to visit the artwork and begin to learn more through additional books, web sites, and cultural institutions that display the artists’ work. The journal segment of the project, includes a place to organize information and helps the young reader to capture developing ideas and shape them into a format that promotes process and product.

This written thesis explores the way in which Art and Play helps to promote imagination and lifelong learning.