The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren

Download or read book The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren written by Iona Opie and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2000-08-31 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1959, Iona and Peter Opie's The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren is a pathbreaking work of scholarship that is also a splendid and enduring work of literature. Going outside the nursery, with its assortment of parent-approved entertainments, to observe and investigate the day-to-day creative intelligence and activities of children, the Opies bring to life the rites and rhymes, jokes and jeers, laws, games, and secret spells of what has been called "the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which shows no signs of dying out."