Playground

A childhood without electronic gadgets was magical. Physical exercise and expansion of the imagination were its hallmarks. Each poem in this topical collection treats of one of those activities of that pre-digital era such as playing in a cardboard refrigerator box, catching lightning bugs, exploring the creek or swinging. A childhood without computer games, expensive toys and around-the-clock television programs is nearing extinction. Pockets may still exist where children spend their days mostly out-of-doors inventing games. They enjoy activities that involve objects found in the ordinary household or simple, low-cost toys without batteries. This collection of poems captures that bygone era when children amused themselves without prepackaged video images. They developed imagination and spent more hours outdoors instead of before a television screen or computer monitor.
Through the activities that form the subjects of these poems, children intuitively acquired knowledge about life, nature and human relations. That fresh, perceptive and keen observation of the world is a quality not to be dimmed by advancing years. Through these poems the reader experiences that child-like exuberance. The poems evoke those first joyous encounters with life.