Project summary

Based on theories about ‘The Strange Child’, and theories about play and criteria of play as found in Peter Smith’s Children and Play (2009), the aim of this article is to examine the nature of play in various illustrations of Pinocchio’s sojourn in The Land of Toys. The article also discusses the representations of play in light of the ambiguous message in the book about the necessity of freedom and at the same time the necessity of formation. Since physical activity play seems to be the most frequent kind of game in The Land of Toys, the text, but not always the illustrations, seems to perceive physical activity play as a hindrance to the formation process where a physical controlled and subordinated body is a basic condition.