Summer Blog Series 2023:
Summer, the Libraries & PLAY #5

The last installment of our 2023 Summer Blog Series is from returning guest blogger Elizabeth McChesney.

Playing for Higher Stakes: The Human Rights Game

Learning through board game play dates back thousands of years and has many strategies and outcomes. In Victoria, Australia, Hugh Kingsley, Educationalist and Founder of The Brainery®, believes gameplay is an excellent educational tool. “I see it this way,” says Hugh with a twinkle in their eye, “If students are having fun, they are engaged, they are learning-that simple.” But what about a game that can help build empathy in youth, promote pro-social behaviors, and encourage freedom, equity, and dignity?
Building on his expertise as an educator and creator of learning tools, Hugh and his co-collaborator turned to co-creator, Andrea Chorney created a game that could address issues related to the record level of child and teen anxiety and where “mores, ethics, and values are learned from non-traditional sources often with materialistic and prejudice underpinnings.” Hugh continues, The Human Rights Game came from a shared place of desiring to help children learn right from wrong in a rapidly changing world. I put this argument into a letter addressed to the Director General of the United Nations, and about a week later, I received a reply. Now I’m thrilled the Human Rights Game is an approved resource available on loan from the resource library at the UN Geneva.”
The Human Rights Game is also available to educators, youth groups, schools, camps, and libraries. Although it can be played in a home setting, the best outcomes develop when played in a learning environment with a facilitator. It is a highly engaging, fun game that addresses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 30 Articles and its three underlying pillars: Freedom, Equality, and Dignity.
Players ages 10+ engage with four decks of cards to discuss how they would handle potential ethical scenarios based on the 30 Articles. Bounce Back Cards add certain chutes and ladders elements related to environmental issues. “I hope the game will empower kids, teens, and adults and vest them to live within the UN’s healthy framework that recognizes freedoms and rights come with a responsibility to each other and the wider world.”
The game makers highly recommend a post-game discussion where facilitators ask questions and help clarify misunderstandings. This is followed by players’ extension activities that will help keep the learning about human rights alive and ongoing.
Hugh’s enormous heart and intellect are matched by his huge vision for the game:

“I believe that following a healthy behavior framework such as the UDHR 30 articles will lead to less racism, antisemitism, hate, bullying, and anxiety.”

About the Author: Liz McChesney served as the Chicago Public Library Director of Children’s Services and Family Engagement, where she earned numerous national awards, including the American Library Service to Children Distinguished Services Recipient. She now serves as the Community Partnerships Consultant to the Laundry Cares Foundation, where she helps build early learning in everyday spaces such as laundromats, WIC Centers, and family courts. She additionally serves as a Senior Advisor to the Urban Libraries Council and is a Senior Fellow at the National Summer Learning Association. In all these roles, play is at the center of her work. She has two books with the American Library Association, Summer Matters: Making All Learning Count (2017) and Pairing STEAM with Stories (2019). Her first picture book, Keke’s Super Strong Double Hugs, was published in 2020 and her forthcoming book, The Path Forward: Serving Children Equitably is forthcoming.
About the Summer PLAY Blog Series: This summer we are featuring some great PLAY resources with our 2023 Summer PLAY Blog Series, starring invited play partners as our content experts.  PLAY is important no matter what season it is…so NO SUMMER LEARNING LOSS here!  For 2023, we are reprising the Libraries & PLAY blog series.

Summer Blog Series 2023 – Summer, the Libraries & PLAY #4

Check out the next installment of our Summer Blog Series.  Guest blogger Noah Lenstra, PhD, shares a summary and review of a recent book that highlights the intersection of play and public librarianship.

PLAY Book Review – Simple Positive Play at the Library

Jennifer Ilardi. Simple Positive Play at the Library. Rowman and Littlefield, 2023.
If you are looking for a practical, inspiring book to get you excited about trying something new in your community, in your library, and with diverse community stakeholders, this is the book for you!
Jennifer Ilardi worked as a Youth Services Specialist/Librarian at the St. Louis County Library from 2008 to 2019. While working in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2016 Ilardi started Simple Positive Play, whose mission is “to help facilitate playful experiences for young people and their families while also promoting an engaged and informed community.” She holds a Master’s of Library and Information Science degree from Syracuse University and a post-graduate certificate in Youth Experience from the University of Maryland Library Science program.
In Simple Positive Play at the Library, Jennifer Ilardi uses her extensive hands-on experience to break down how and why to support open-ended play in libraries and in other community spaces by leveraging the power of community collaboration.
The past twenty years have seen increasing calls for librarians to support playful learning. But simply telling someone to start playing at their library can be overwhelming.
With her advice you too can turn your library, or really any public, community space, into a “playground where young people can utilize what they know to explore their interests,” as Ilardi puts it.
Her experiences developing Simple Positive Play were shaped by her visceral experience of the Ferguson Unrest, a series of protests in St. Louis County spurred by the fatal shooting of the unarmed African American Michael Brown on August 9, 2014.
In these fraught environment, Ilardi turned to play as a means of sparking positive, social change. Ilardi recalls in the book how when “I shared with someone I turned to for ideas that the space [for Simple Positive Play] would be in Ferguson … she told me not to follow through and said it was too unsafe” (p. 12).
Ilardi nonetheless persisted. She says of that time “When the protests in Ferguson delayed school starting in the Ferguson-Florissant School District, the only thing I could think of doing was more of what I had been doing all summer long. I asked my manager if I could use our meeting room space and I filled it with games and art supplies. I shared that I was at the library on Facebook as a way of letting some of the community I connected with know I was there and the space was there for them as they were trying to figure out what to do. So we played.”
Ilardi sees spaces for play as a critical social good – and she sees librarians as critical providers of that social good.
This book will be of use not only to librarians, but also to individuals seeking to do more in communities through collaboration with librarians, and to anyone seeking about how to use community spaces to create more opportunities for playful learning.
Ilardi unpacks her approach to Simple Positive Play across 12 chapters that focus on how to support open-ended play through the participatory design of public spaces, including libraries.
Chapter 7 and 9 focus on the “how” of how to do this work, with chapters on “collaboration,” “playwork,” and the “importance of stakeholders.”
The final chapter “The continuing evolution of Simple Positive Play” conveys Ilardi’s lessons learned from seven years developing this unique approach to play at the intersection of public librarianship and community development.
She closes the book with this powerful statement:

“Simple Positive Play, the concept and the organization, were inspired by libraries and those who work tirelessly to promote curiosity and innovation. As a free resource located in large and small communities all over the country, libraries provide opportunities for joyful exploration. The library is a playground where young people can utilize what they know to explore their interests and youth public library workers help facilitate that exploration by developing welcoming spaces and hosting programs to showcase ideas.”

Written in an accessible, engaging format, Simple Positive Play at the Library deserves to be widely read.

About the Author: Noah Lenstra, PhD, is Director of Let’s Move in Libraries and associate professor of Library & Information Science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Learn more about Noah at noahlenstra.com and follow him on Twitter at @NoahLenstra.
About the Summer PLAY Blog Series: This summer we are featuring some great PLAY resources with our 2023 Summer PLAY Blog Series, starring invited play partners as our content experts.  PLAY is important no matter what season it is…so NO SUMMER LEARNING LOSS here!  Noah Lenstra, Director of Let’s Move in Libraries, is reprising his Summer, the Libraries & PLAY blog series.  This summer Noah will highlight recent books on the intersection of play and librarianship.

Summer Blog Series 2023:
Summer, the Libraries & PLAY #3

By returning guest blogger Elizabeth McChesney (bio below), along with Bryan Wunar,  President and CEO of Discovery World (Milwaukee).

Playing Around with STEM and Literacy: Libraries Bring Together Learning through Play

Play as a public service is a global concept explored by public libraries. Library leaders worldwide convened in May 2023 in Aarhus, Denmark, for the NEXT Library Conference. The Aarhus Public Libraries, who created this conference, is a mecca for play and learning for people of all ages.  The role of play as a democratizing and essential public library service was one of the core pillars of the conference.
We were honored to present a session called Playing Around with STEM and Literacy  at the conference. In this session, we explored how playing, linked to scientific concepts and children’s books, can help build the flexible and agile thinking scientists and science-literate citizens need. Play can promote critical 21st-century skills: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity, and it can also help children to spark curiosity and informal learning and be successful working in diverse teams. It can also develop key cross-cutting science concepts laid out in the Next Generation Science Standards.
Playing with science or science play marries together some of the characteristics of play (active, risky, communicative, enjoyable, involved, meaningful, sociable, therapeutic, and voluntary) to  to best practices of scientific thinking (including persistence, curiosity, and perseverance). Open play allows children to explore concepts related to a scientific idea or principle. Examples include filling plastic cups with water in the bathtub or playing with how sound reverberates when a young child hits a kitchen pot with a wooden spoon. Directly connecting play to a scientific principle allows youth to make sense of the world around them. These examples show how a child utilizes both inquiry and observation in their play. Good science learning depends on taking chances, exploring the unknown, and being curious about how things work, fit together, or act upon one another. Science play promotes the habits of mind of effective 21st Century learners: those who can practice communication, collaboration, creativity, and problem-solving.

Our session at NEXT Library focused on two types of science play. First, we explored the engineering design process and how play can help us help a character in a book. Participants played with a way to use index cards to build a stable structure for the three little pigs to take cover from the blustering, big, bad wolf. In teams, we played with shapes in structures, what makes a stable foundation, and how to build a tower. This is an example of how libraries combine a children’s book with play and scientific concepts. Said Lena Sjornsen, Sweden: “Playing with these concepts is the best of hands-on learning and play. It is fun, but it also helps build vocabulary, solidify science knowledge, and even helps us build empathy for those little, lazy pigs!” We believe this type of scientific play also builds the skills needed to promote the language comprehension strand of the Scarborough Reading Rope which comes from the research we refer to as the Science of Reading. When we engage children in playful reading, we are helping to build background knowledge, vocabulary, language structure, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. Casper Gurrensen of Finland said, “This makes so much sense to play with stories and extend them in these fun and informal science investigations. It takes the risk out of doing science and makes the play the center while children are learning all around the play.”
For our second experience, we used scientific background knowledge and habits of mind to help land a payload- a raw egg-without it breaking. Teams used materials, bartered with others, and played with how to drop or land something successfully. Scientific skills, including testing, observing, predicting, problem-solving, utilizing resources efficiently, collaborating, and iteration, are all displayed when children or conference participants try this project.
Connecting play to scientific concepts is a fun and effective way to learn in the summertime or anytime. Play is an enormous vehicle for learning and libraries and museums are wonderful places for the discovery and exploration that bring together science, and literacy through play. Discovery World in Milwaukee, WI, offers this extensive list  of science activities that can easily be adapted for kids of all ages to use in playful learning.
Photo descriptions:
Photo1 – Bear Slide outside the Dokk 1, Aarhus Library
Photo2 – Participants at Playing with STEM and Literacy build a stable structure. But can it withstand the weight of the wolf? Or in this case: a book about a wolf?
Photo3 – Raw eggs are loaded into a landing contraption at NEXT Library Festival, Aarhus, Denmark.
Photo4 – A team of new friends collaborate on their ‘egg-stronaut’ lander, “NEXT Egg.”

About the Author: Liz McChesney served as the Chicago Public Library Director of Children’s Services and Family Engagement, where she earned numerous national awards, including the American Library Service to Children Distinguished Services Recipient. She now serves as the Community Partnerships Consultant to the Laundry Cares Foundation, where she helps build early learning in everyday spaces such as laundromats, WIC Centers, and family courts. She additionally serves as a Senior Advisor to the Urban Libraries Council and is a Senior Fellow at the National Summer Learning Association. In all these roles, play is at the center of her work. She has two books with the American Library Association, Summer Matters: Making All Learning Count (2017) and Pairing STEAM with Stories (2019). Her first picture book, Keke’s Super Strong Double Hugs, was published in 2020 and her forthcoming book, The Path Forward: Serving Children Equitably is forthcoming.
About the Summer PLAY Blog Series: This summer we are featuring some great PLAY resources with our 2023 Summer PLAY Blog Series, starring invited play partners as our content experts.  PLAY is important no matter what season it is…so NO SUMMER LEARNING LOSS here!  For 2023, we are reprising the Libraries & PLAY blog series.

Summer Blog Series 2023 – Summer, the Libraries & PLAY #2

Check out the next installment of our Summer Blog Series.  Remember, PLAY is important no matter what season it is…so NO SUMMER LEARNING LOSS here! Guest blogger Noah Lenstra, PhD, shares a summary and review of a recent book that highlights the intersection of play and public librarianship.

PLAY Book Review – The Library as Playground: How Games and Play are Reshaping Public Culture

Leorke, Dale, and Danielle Wyatt. The library as playground: How games and play are reshaping public culture. Rowman & Littlefield, 2022
Australians Dale Leorke and Danielle Wyatt recently wrote and published an entire book on the topic of the library as playground.
In this book they explore how games and play are reshaping the design, spaces, programming, and even the daily life of public libraries in Australia, Singapore, and Finland.
Having backgrounds in urban design and planning, Leorke and Wyatt are particularly interested in both permanent and temporary transformations in public library spaces, particularly things like gaming zones, makerspaces, escape rooms, LARPs (live action role-playing games), and other immersive play experiences supported by public libraries in those three countries.
The opening chapter – “Play in Public Culture” – sets the stage by discussing how play has become more ubiquitous as a concept. We now think a lot more about the importance of play in our daily lives, in our urban planning, in our leisure time, and in our digital culture.
This increasing ubiquity of the idea of play shapes how public librarians approach their work. Public libraries are not islands but instead reflect and shape public culture.
As games and play continue to become more central to our culture, the library as a broker and advocate for playful spaces, places, and nourishment grows in importance.
How has play and public librarianship been coming together in Singapore, Australia, and Finland?
Based on their ethnographic research, Leorke and Wyatt find that “play has become more prominent, more varied, and more expansive in library spaces” (p. 121).
The authors discuss how in Finland playful librarianship has included developing new library collections that include snowshoes, ice hockey gear, and trekking poles, which the authors say “echo[es] Finnish culture’s deep roots in the outdoors and nature” (p. 43).
Chapter 3, “The Well-Played Library,” features different modalities of games in libraries: digital games, tabletop and physical games, and immersive games.
Chapter 4 on “the spatial and temporal transformation of libraries” includes sections on gaming zones, children’s/teen zones, makerspaces, and playful architecture.
Chapter 5 on “partners in play” looks at how public librarians work in collaboration with those in the gaming industries in Melbourne and Helsinki, and it also includes a section on how library facilities seek to “integrate traditional areas for play in the city-parks, playgrounds, and public squares-into [library] spaces and services” (p. 87).
Chapter 6 concludes the book with a call to action to put play at the center of our understanding of public librarianship.

Anyone interested in understanding how play has become more ubiquitous around the world would find this book to be valuable reading. The book also suggests possibilities not only for the integration of play into public libraries, but also for any public spaces.

This is the first of two blog posts I’ll be writing this summer on recent books that highlight the intersection of play and public librarianship.
My next blog post will focus on Simple Positive Play at the Library, a new book written by an American public librarian that just came out in Spring 2023.
The Library as Playground: How Games and Play are Reshaping Public Culture. By Dale Leorke & Danielle Wyatt. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022. 149 pp.

About the Author: Noah Lenstra, PhD, is Director of Let’s Move in Libraries and associate professor of Library & Information Science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Learn more about Noah at noahlenstra.com and follow him on Twitter at @NoahLenstra.
About the Summer PLAY Blog Series: This summer we are featuring some great PLAY resources with our 2023 Summer PLAY Blog Series, starring invited play partners as our content experts.  PLAY is important no matter what season it is…so NO SUMMER LEARNING LOSS here!  Noah Lenstra, Director of Let’s Move in Libraries, is reprising his Summer, the Libraries & PLAY blog series.  This summer Noah will highlight recent books on the intersection of play and librarianship.

Summer Blog Series 2023 – Summer, the Libraries & PLAY #1

“Play, Learn, and Read with Your Local Librarians This Summer”

Across North America, public libraries offer a wide variety of opportunities for all ages to play, learn, and read during the summer months. This blog post features just a few of the events coming up in Summer 2023.
A common theme is that nearly every one of these examples is a community partnership. Public librarians don’t work by themselves. They work with communities to increase access to learning, to play, and to reading. I encourage you to suggest a playful partnership with your local librarians.
On Saturday June 10, 2023, the Charles County (Maryland) Public Library teams up with the Charles County Department Recreation, Parks & Tourism for All Together Now: A Summer Learning Kickoff Party. The event, organized in conjunction with the National Recreation & Park Association’s Family Health & Fitness Day, will feature live music, field games, physical activities for all ages, STEM learning opportunities, and opportunities to sign up the library’s Summer learning challenge.
“Every summer, the library has a summer learning and reading program for the community. This year we wanted to partner with the Department of Recreation, Parks and Tourism to combine reading and fitness,” stated Kenneth Wayne Thompson, Executive Director of Charles County Public Library.
Checkout some other PLAYful events planned this summer in libraries in Michigan, Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and even Ontario, Canada:

• In Michigan, an annual block party returns to downtown East Lansing every Thursday night and East Lansing Public Library’s Library on the Go mobile pop-up library will be there along with giant Connect 4, cornhole, giant Jenga, ping pong, giant chess and more. “It’s just a really nice vibe,” said Brice Bush, with the East Lansing Public Library. “It’s a great opportunity to be in downtown without worrying about traffic because the street is closed and it’s just nice.”
• In Alabama, Mobile Public Library invites all to join them for a wide variety of activities for all ages including special performances, reading challenges, crafts, games and more. The grand prize for each age group in the summer reading challenge is a bicycle sponsored by Adventure Earth.
• In Oklahoma, the Miami Public Library ends Summer reading with a pool party. Library director Callie Cortner said, “They fall into that summer slump where they are not really doing much of anything, so we want to keep them reading, so we challenge them, they earn prizes for reading, they earn prizes for attending some of our events, and then at the very end we do a big pool party for everybody that has completed their goals.”
• In Ontario, Grimsby Public Library holds a Summer Reading Kickoff Party on Saturday, June 3 from 2 to 4 p.m. This fun-filled afternoon features a parkour obstacle course from Play Project Parkour, balloon animals from Halaloo, First Words Workshop, Llama Tutoring, popcorn, face painting, giant board games, an art activity, button-making, seed planting, bubbles and more! There’s something for everyone thanks to an abundance of community partnerships.
• In Nebraska, Grand Island Public Library kicks off its summer programming on Thursday, May 25. The teen summer learning kicks off with after-hours party set for 7:45 p.m. Monday, June 5, at the library. The library closes and doors lock at 8, but teens ages 11-18 can enjoy laser tag, food and more until 9:30 p.m. No registration is required and, of course, it’s all free!
• In Ohio, the Wood County District Public Library invites its community to outdoor family playtimes held throughout the months of June and July at Wooster Green. At these events, families can enjoy group games, activities with different community partners each week, dance, listen to music, and more. To sweeten the deal, family playtimes with librarians coincides with the City of Bowling Green’s Food Truck Thursdays.
• In Wisconsin, dozens of community organizations gathered at Safe and Sound Saturday on May 13 in Milwaukee to help youth get involved in summer programs. The Milwaukee Public Library joined the Milwaukee Police Department, the Milwaukee Health Center, community leaders for a day of dancing, activities, and food focused on connecting youth to opportunities to play and learn during the summer months.
• In Indiana, a children’s street fair complete with superheroes will kick off the Lebanon Public Library’s summer reading program on June 5. A street block will be closed down to make room for a petting zoo, inflatables, trucks to touch, airbrush tattoos, carnival games, an obstacle course, a special activity for toddlers, a scavenger hunt, prizes, and food, including free shaved ice for children. In addition to connecting with librarians, participants at the library’s block party can meet representatives of area non-profit organizations who will set up booths along the street.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what public librarians have planned for Summer 2023. Join us to play, learn, and read all summer long.
We encourage you to share how you play, learn, and read with your local librarians! Tag @USPlayCoalition or @LetsMoveLibrary on Twitter and other social media to share, or email me at njlenstr@ucng.edu.

About the Author: Noah Lenstra, PhD, is Director of Let’s Move in Libraries and associate professor of Library & Information Science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Learn more about Noah at noahlenstra.com and follow him on Twitter at @NoahLenstra.
About the Summer PLAY Blog Series: This summer we are featuring some great PLAY resources with our 2023 Summer PLAY Blog Series, starring invited play partners as our content experts.  PLAY is important no matter what season it is…so NO SUMMER LEARNING LOSS here!  In June, Noah Lenstra, Director of Let’s Move in Libraries, is reprising his Summer, the Libraries & PLAY blog series.  This summer Noah will highlight recent books on the intersection of play and librarianship.