Child’s Play: Reading and Remaking Gendered Action Texts in Toys

Abstract

When children pick up and play with their favorite toys, they are also taking up a complex mix of gender messages and cultural expectations about who they can be and how they should play. Drawing on sociocultural theories that conceptualize literacy as mediated action and play as a literacy that produces action texts, this chapter examines pre-schoolers’ pretend play to uncover the literacies that children use to make stories crafted with bodies, toys, and popular media. Toys are invitations to enact beloved character identities and media narratives but also engage playgroup practices and gender expectations for players. Mediated discourse analysis of young girls’ interactions with toys during dramatic play reveals how the smallest actions – cradling a doll or waving a stick – fit into live-action stories and into larger patterns of expectations for “doing girl.” This chapter examines how everyday play reshapes toys’ embedded meanings and remakes these expectations, making child’s play an important site for reimagining gendered possibilities.