Category Archives: Toys and games

Pitching Pennies: Master Michel Angelo’s Juvenile Sports and Pastimes

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Children pitching pennies against a wall in the school yard.

If you enjoyed “Cure for the Summer Time Blues” and “Stitching a Soviet Monkey,”  here is a third post featuring a children’s book with instructions for making playthings.   Master Michel Angelo’s  Juvenile Sports and Pastimes (London: T. Carnan, 1776) describes an eighteenth-century variation of pitching pennies, called “pitch in the hole” or “dumps.”   Like so many pastimes of this period, it involved gambling and part of its appeal was vying for the other players’ pocket money.

The game did not have to be played with loose change–dumps could be substituted for small coins.  So what exactly is a dump?   Merriam-Webster has only definitions for “dump” as a verb; for its meanings as a noun, other sources have to be checked.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a dump is “a roughly-cast leaden counter, used by boys in some games.”   A  little more detail is provided by Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785): “Dumps are also small pieces of lead, cast by schoolboys in the shape of money.”

Chapter V of Juvenile Sports and Pastimes explains how to make these playing pieces needed for a rousing game of pitch in the hole.  First, the mold must be made.  Master Michel Angelo was very particular about the material: he prefered for a nice piece of limestone chalk, which was not as soft as clay or as hard as freestone.  For the inside of the mold, take a piece of chalk about the size of a penny, saw it in half the long way, and  polish the two sides.  The outside mold required a second piece of chalk three to four inches long.   The sides had to be smoothed with a stone moistened with water, then set aside to dry for two days.  When the mold pieces were dry, the dies for the dumps could be drawn the size of a farthing or half penny with a compass circles, and then the circles hollowed out with a flat-pointed knife.  The last step of making the mold was to cut the channels for the molten lead to pass through the dies.    The insider of the mold was supposed to look like this, with A being the opening into the chamber and B, C, and E being the dumps.

Juvenile Sports and Pastimes. 2nd ed. London: T. Carnan, 1776. (Cotsen 5356)

Master Michel Angelo encourages his readers to decorate the dyes with designs more ambitious than roughly drawn crosses.   He illustrates two of his own making, which featured portraits of his parents.  A dump this detailed may take a day to carve, but he assured his readers, the workmanship will be so admired, that people will be willing to pay as much as a basket of fruit or several books for a single one.  He boasted of having sold many.

Now to cast the dumps.  While the pewter is melting over a fire, place the two molds together and wrap them tightly with a wet cloth (the wet cloth was to minimize burns from handling the hold mold).  Grasp the molds in the left hand, hold them at an angle some distance from your body, and pour the molten lead into the mold with a ladle.  It looks to me as if Master Michel Angelo is not following his own instructions to the letter…

When the molds have cooled down, carefully remove the dumps with  the fingers, taking care not to scorch them.  Trim away any loose bits and smooth the edges with a file.  Te The boy in the illustration below from  Richard Johnson’s The Misfortunes of Tommy Careless, or the Misfortunes of a Week (London: E. Newbery, 1793) seems to be mass producing dumps on the kitchen table.

To conclude the chapter, Master Michel Angelo described the lottery, a new game of dumps he invented suitable for playing in wet weather when confined to quarters.  Unlike pitch in the hole, it is not supposed to be played for money.   He recommended playing it on a paved surface, which made it easier to draw the following diagram of the game board.

A knife is inserted in a crevice between one of the stones.  Each player has one turn to toss his dumps at the knife.  As the rules are complicated, I  will let Master Michel Angelo explain them in his own words: “If it happens to fall in any of the outer squares, the master returns him his own dump, and gives him another besides; it if settles in any of the next smaller squares, he then receives two; and if in the third smaller class of squares, he then receives three, exclusive of that which he chucked: but in either of these cases, if his dump touches any part of the lines which divide one square from another, he forfeits his dump; and if it touches the black square which surrounded the center square, he forfeits two others.  If he is so fortunate as to lodge his dump in the center square, he then receives his own and six others; but if his dump happens ever so little to touch the black square, while the greater half o his dump remain in the center, he not only loses his own, but forfeits six others.”

Ready? Steady, go!

Novel Interactive Books for Kids: McLoughlin’s Sing-a-Song Playerbook

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Sing-A-Song Player Book. McLoughlin Bros., Springfield, Mass., c. 1938. (Cotsen 7158175)

“Interactivity” is one of the bywords of new media and contemporary books of all sorts. It’s hard to read a book review or an article about books or publishing these days without finding some reference to interactivity or mention of an interactive, online adjunct to a printed book. A quick Google search for “interactive books” turns up a whopping 158 million results! Included in the list are: Android apps, iPad items, and yes, even some now relatively”old-format” computer-based books, as well as interactive versions of novels, plays, and poems.

Children’s books are a particularly fertile area for interactivity too. A slightly refined Google search for “interactive books for kids” returns over 56 million items. But interactive books for children are hardly a new idea, or even a fundamentally technology-based phenomenon. From the early days of publications intended for children, interactive aspects have been common. Books with volvelles, flap-books, “magic transformation” books, pop-up books, and various drawing and coloring books were seen by publishers as both appealing and educational offerings for child readers (and their book-buying parents).

Foreword to Sing-a-Song Playerbook with instructions and list of songs below. (Cotsen 7158175)

McLoughlin Brothers, a pioneering publisher of children’s books, games, educational toys, and novelties was finely attuned to the market — and to helping create a market via extensive and persuasive advertising. Thus, it’s hardly surprising to find a wide variety of their interactive items for children in the Cotsen collection; pop-up books, panoramas, books that open up to create a zoo or circus toy, as well as many instances of drawing and coloring books abound.

An unusual example of a McLoughlin item that spans the genres of books and toys is the 1938 Sing-a-Song Playerbook. It has the appearance of a book and has some reading matter and music, but it actually functions as a musical toy. The cover displays some characteristic features of McLoughlin books of the time: bright colors in a visually arresting style, color-printed illustrations, and, of course, a depiction of children having fun. Children have always liked seeing and reading about other children; grown-ups, while they have their roles in children’s literature, are just too boring on their own!

Detail of xylophone and playing mallet (Note the numbers on the individual xylophone bars, which correspond to notes on the simplified musical scores shown below). (Cotsen 7158175)

But this spiral-bound item — for which McLoughlin sought a patent — is more than a book. Take a look at the small xylophone that’s visible though the cover. It comes complete with its own small wooden mallet for playing, which still remains with the book — a survival that’s somewhat amazing some eighty years after publication.

The interior pages of the book feature bright process-printed  illustrations of children (generally presented in characteristic 1930s clothing), facing pages with a song and a simplified musical score, which a child could play on the xylophone in a “play-by-number” manner — and perhaps sing along to, since all the songs have lyrics. Instructions on the Table of Contents page (shown above) instruct a child how to use the book. But McLoughlin’s accompanying Forward section disclaims the “teaching of technical music.” The goal of the book is instead to “provide an interesting medium” for the “sheer joy of doing.”  “Delight” is usually the dominant aspect of the firm’s “Teach and Delight motto in their publications for children.

A variety of traditionally popular children’s songs are featured in the Sing-a-Song Playerbook, from “Jack & Jill” to “London Bridges Falling Down” to “Jingle Bells,” all accompanied by illustrations providing a window (however idealized) onto how children looked and how childhood was depicted in the late 1930s.  It’s a world where boys wore short pants and girls wore skirts or jumpers (and when “men wore hats,” as John Cheever once noted.)

“Jack & Jill” with children clothed in period 1930s attire. (Cotsen 7158175)

Playing “London Bridge is Falling Down” on an idyllic summer day. (Cotsen 7158175)

“Jingle Bells” and a nostalgic depiction of Christmas fun. (Cotsen 7158175)

McLoughlin Brothers thought the Sing-a-Song Playerbook sufficiently novel to feature it in an advertising flyer for booksellers: “McLoughlin Brothers Money Makers, 1938,” which touts the Playerbook as: “Unique! Entertaining! Low Priced! Appealing! Handsome! A Sure Fire Hit!” All music to a retailer’s ears. Note that the firm’s Zoo Book-Toy is also highlighted as “the book that becomes a toy!” — another variation of the interactive book format.

“McLoughlin Money Makers, Fall 1938.” Springfield Mass.: McLoughlin Bros. Inc., [1938]. (Cotsen 97060)

And the Sing-a-Song Playerbook did indeed seem to have been a hit. A later McLoughlin retail flyer (presumably from 1939) advertises a sequel, The Second Sing-a-Song Playerbook, and notes that the original sold over 400,000 copies in nine months, a staggering sales volume for a children’s novelty item in 1938, especially one priced at $1.25 in a time when many McLoughlin books sold for a quarter!  And take a look at McLoughlin’s PR-speak: ” musical notes play a profit tune,” “more a gift than just a book could be,” “appeals to children from six to sixty.” (Hmmm…)

“Second Sing-A-Song Player Book” advertising flyer. [Springfield Massachusetts: McLoughlin Bros. Inc., 1939]. (Cotsen 96882)

The Sing-a-Song Playerbook and McLoughlin’s marketing materials for it combine to provide a window onto childhood at the time, the marketing of children’s books, and what was new and exciting in terms of interactive material for children. But by themselves, the book or advertising materials tell only part of the story. It’s only by looking at them together that we can really see how publishing and marketing were combined by the premier American publisher of children’s books of the era. Providing context for the books and how they were presented to the public is one of the real values of publisher’s advertisement and publisher’s catalogs, which, as ephemera, often weren’t saved and reused in the way children’s books themselves were.  Cotsen Library has one of the largest collections of McLoughlin Brothers publisher’s catalogs and advertising flyers, which are the subject of a an ongoing digital project now.  Stay tuned for more on that in a subsequent blog posting…

To see some glorious French interactive books, see the on-line exhibition on Pere Castor