The Children's Book of Games, Puzzles and Pastimes (2 vol, 1952-59)

Let's revisit those two books by Odhams Press that I mentioned a while ago.  I finally received actual physical copies of those two volumes, but it took two full months to get to me from the U.K.  The books were "The Children's Book of Games, Puzzles and Pastimes" (undated but cited to be 1952 to 1956) and the second volume "More Games, Puzzles and Pastimes" (copyright 1959 on the very last page).  

There were a few simple board games sourced from these books on BoardGameGeek, but the actual books were way more interesting than that.  They didn't have much else to offer from a strictly gaming perspective, aside from those 8 to 10 basic board games, but they had a great range of puzzles, and introduced kids to Nine Men's Morris and the old Fox and Geese peg game, Dots, Battleship, some Checkers variations, and an odd search game on a triangle of 21 spaces called "Cat in the Dark", and more.  

The main attraction of the book were the Pastimes, which were 8-10 page articles on outdoor exploration, life in ponds, identifying plants, hiking and camping, keeping fish at home, wild flowers to collect, watching trains, simple puppeteering, life on the seashore, collecting moths and butterflies, even an article on stamp collecting with some good examples of errors and ways that stamps differ from one printing to the next.  


Each volume has at least 100 black and white illustrations and several color plates, all of them perfect for the theme and target age.  What a collection.  The overall experience is like a stack of old Ranger Rick magazines full of articles and adventures and things to learn.

The inside back cover of book two  had a full color game I don't recall seeing on BGG: a chutes and ladders variant called Rockets and Parachutes with little historical dates and notes in each box.  Looks like they lumped it under Chutes and Ladders and if there was an image it got lost in the pile of almost 500 other images.  


The books also have a lot of suggestions for "party games" which tend to be trivial, like who can find a certain number in a deck of cards first, or which team can sort a shuffled deck of cards first -- that's bound to be fun for a few minutes, but is not going to win any design awards.  Then it has a ton of activities including scavenger hunts and hidden object games.

These books a so full of ideas, they're just a pleasure to flip through.


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