The Boy on the Beach: Building Community through Play

by Vivian Gussin Paley

Four-year-old Eli plays alone at the shore, inventing dramas out of sand and water. He is Builder, Fireman, Protector, and Scout, overcoming waves and conquering monsters. Enter Marianne and doll, Mother and Baby, eager to redefine Eli as a good father and homesteader. Their separate visions intertwine in a search for a common ground on which howling wolves and butterfly sisters can learn to understand and need one another.

What can the richly imagined, impressively adaptable fantasy world of these children tell us about childhood, development, education, and even life itself? For fifty years, teacher and writer Vivian Gussin Paley has been exploring the imagery, language, and lore of young children, asking the questions they ask of themselves.

In The Boy on the Beach she continues to do so, going deeper into the mystery of play as she follows Eli and Marianne through the kindergarten year, finding more answers and more questions. How does their teacher, Mrs. Olson, manage to honor and utilize the genius of play to create an all-inclusive community in which boys and girls like each other and listen to each other’s stories? Why is Paley’s fellow teacher Yu-ching in Taiwan certain that her children pretend to be kittens in order to become necessary to the group? And why do teachers in London see their childrens’ role-playing as the natural end to loneliness in the school community?

Rich with the words of children and teachers themselves, The Boy on the Beach is vintage Paley, a wise and provocative appreciation of the importance of play and enduring curiosity about the nature of childhood and the imagination.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Plays, Teaching

102 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2010

About the author

Vivian Gussin Paley was an American pre-school and kindergarten teacher, early childhood education researcher, and author.

She taught and did most of her research at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Despite her status in the field today, she has described the first thirteen years of her teaching career as being an "uninspired and uninspiring teacher."

Reviews

[Lizzy Van Horn]

incredible.

[Sophia Black]

Inspiring story told by through the stories of children

I can’t find a good way to describe how I’m feeling right now after finishing this book. One word that does come to mind however, is “inspiring.” As a college student studying early childhood education, this book has made me realize something that I feel often goes unnoticed in the classroom. And that is that play is a child’s process of learning, understanding, coping, and loving. This book has inspired me to create a place for children to engage in play like the children in the book and be a teacher who understands the significance of every child’s story.

[Lexi]

Age Level: This book is definitely for higher level reading. It is for students who may be interested in becoming a teacher one day. 5th grade through college a like if they are interested would like this book.

Summary: This book is about the experiences that Vivian Paley had with encounters with children and their story telling.

Review: I think this would be a great book to have in a high school career based class or one of those classrooms that the students work with preschoolers on the school campus. I would not say no to a younger student reading it if they are interested in the subject matter or are like a babysitter, it might teach them a lot.

[dirt]

This book is a great snack. In just 90 pages, these delicious anecdotes will remind you how multifaceted play is and how important it is for children to act out stories.

For instance, Vivian Gussin Paley implores, "As in a really good research study, play does not value closure. It seeks new directions and unexpected results." Later, in her correspondence with Yu-ching, they settle on play being explorations of love and friendship. This idea is solidified when a class takes a line from one of their stories that becomes their mantra, "We together have a friendship."

Mrs. Paley also brings in the words of Virginia Woolf and Thomas Mann to help us understand what in underneath all of the stories. She offers a stunning quote by Mann from The Magic Mountain, "We tell a story in order to give meaning to time, since time has no shape or essence itself."

This notion of meaning is echoed in Grant L. Voth's introduction to his lecture on The House on Mango Street. In his series The Skeptic’s Guide to the Great Books, he cited an interview in which Sandra Cisneros shared that The House on Mango Street was not an autobiography, but a selection of stories that she either lived through or witnessed. She then rearranged them to make sense because "in life there is no such clear order."

Lately, in my own classroom, I have been thinking about how the stories we tell can help us define (or redefine) who we are. The Boy on the Beach has given me a great deal of food for thought.

More than anything, listen.

[Collette]

3.5 - A fellow preschool teacher recommended this author to me. This was the only book the county library had of hers. She's taught preschool and kindergarten for decades and I was excited to read her wisdom. I was quite surprised at what I got and almost quit reading. The format is very odd. It felt a little disjointed and didn't flow well, but yet somehow that worked. I just have never read anything quite like it. I'd have kept it at a 3, but the content of understanding children through the stories that they tell made me listen with different ears as a boy in my class today was adding himself to the story I was reading to the class. So, I think it has given me some new perspective and I'm more curious now to see if her other books are written in a similar way.

[Amy]

Vivian gussin Paley has amazing insight and I always learn something about kids when I read her books. This one helped me think about some students I've had that behave really differently than the others. I'd like to know more about extending her ideas about play to my sevens. We sure are headed the wrong way right now with our curriculum...

[Alexander]

I loved this book. It's very easy to read and it really helped me connect with some of my challenging students. Entering respectfully into the child's script can be the only way to speak with them. Showing interest in their story helps them feel valued. For me, it went a long way in gaining compliance with classroom routines once I could frame it in his / her story play.

[Sharlet Mullen]

this book walks through the stories in a preschool classroom giving understanding to the stories and acting out of play time for children. It really shows that playing is an essential part of life for children and how they start to understand what happens around them.

[Carmine]

Must read more Vivian Paley.