Here is an unusual, charming book of toys, games, and children's literature, written by the author of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. More than 500 rare and beautiful toys from the renowned collection of Paris' Musée des Arts Décoratifs are photographed by Michel Pintado in tableaux of children's playrooms from 1870 to the present. These unearthly photographs -amusing, moving, intriguing, and at times, terrifying-alternate with text by Alberto Manguel that mingles the real and the imaginary, truth and fiction, retelling both well-known and obscure children's stories. Here is an unusual, charming book of toys, games, and children's literature, written by the author of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. More than 500 rare and beautiful toys from the renowned collection of Paris' Musée des Arts Décoratifs are photographed by Michel Pintado in tableaux of children's playrooms from 1870 to the present. These unearthly photographs -amusing, moving, intriguing, and at times, terrifying-alternate with text by Alberto Manguel that mingles the real and the imaginary, truth and fiction, retelling both well-known and obscure children's stories.
It is a pity that toys are too important to leave to children: no child would have produced a catalog to the toy collection of the Muse des Arts Dcoratifs, Paris, quite like this one. Two (presumably adult) designers and photographer Pintado have taken more than 500 historic toys and arranged them into tableaux forming garish psychosexual dramas more representative of the creators' thinking than of the typical kid's littered room. Interspersed with these scenes are 36 spare pages of intellectual musings by Manguel, an officer of the French Order of Arts & Letters. If the reader still retains any interest in the toys after this heavy going, a nine-page index illustrates each toy in the jumbled scenes with a short history. Yet the photos of the toys are small enough to be covered by a nickel so that it can be difficult to correlate the thumbnail with the toy in the tableaux. Not useful to historians, collectors, or children, this volume is for libraries of fantasy.—David McClelland, Philadelphia
[Page 87]. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
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