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Morgenstern links his early, binge-like reading habits to his later academic view, arguing that reading itself is a form of playing that generates images. He emphasizes the role of play in children’s psychological development and challenges the belief that adult novels are superior due to irony rather than humor. Drawing on Deleuze and theorists of play, he describes reading as phantasmagoric play.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-childrens-novel-as-a-gateway-to-play-an-interview-with-john-morgenstern/591517/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-childrens-novel-as-a-gateway-to-play-an-interview-with-john-morgenstern/591517.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"supergirl","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-19","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":81},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why does John Morgenstern see children’s novels as a gateway to play?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"He argues that reading generates images and functions as a kind of playing, so children’s novels enable readers to return to a lost form of phantasmagoric play.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"Which book does Morgenstern cite as influential in understanding reading as play?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"He highlights The Logic of Sense by Gilles Deleuze as central to his discovery that what he was doing as a reader was playing.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What does “phantasmagoric” play mean in Morgenstern’s theory?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It refers to a play form where texts create images and where play involves the ludic construction and deconstruction of irreality, connecting play with dreaming and daydreaming.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},591517,1792360437,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":81,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":52,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":144},962088121634,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_9964176cb1d06d4a9deccf72a44ae3dc","the Children’s novel as a Gateway to Play  \nAn Interview with John Morgenstern  \nJohn Morgenstern has taught literature and literacy at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for more than thirty years. He traces his interest in children’s literature and play to his boyhood experiences: he read four novels a week—the maximum he could take from the bookmobile that served his Toronto suburb—and incorporated the stories into his play in the nearby Scarborough Bluffs. As an adult, he approaches children’s literature with a more academic bent but remembers his boyhood responses to children’s novels well. They inform his thinking in his Playing with Books: A Study of the Reader as Child, published in 2009. Noteworthy for its consideration of reading as play, the book is a short but sweeping volume in which Morgenstern explores the history of children’s literature, literacy and the modern conception of childhood, the role of play in the psychological development of children, and narrative techniques in children’s novels. In this interview, he discusses how children’s novels serve as an entry point for play.  \nAmerican Journal of Play: As a child, you read as many novels as you could get your hands on. Which were your favorites and why?  \nJohn Morgenstern: I didn’t really have favorites. I was a binge reader; I read hundreds of novels. Once I found an author I liked, I would read everything I could. But, if I had to pick one story that I remember as the most entrancing, it would be Edith Nesbit’s The Phoenix and the Carpet. The reason why is actually very simple. It is a very funny novel about a flying Persian rug that takes children where they want to go; its humor is based on the nature of children’s play.  \nAJP: When you were reading as a child, did you feel that you were playing? Is that what sparked your adult interest in literature? And is there a key book or author that had inspired you most as a scholar?  \nMorgenstern: By the time I was nine years old, I was reading four novels a week. So although I participated in various forms of communal play, reading was a major part of my play experience and clearly one of the reasons I became  \n© 2010 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois  \nan English professor. Only recently, however, I realized that what I was doing as a reader was playing. The most important book on my road to this discovery was The Logic of Sense, by the twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. It’s a philosophical study of the human condition—an exploration of sense and nonsense—that begins with an original reading of the works of Lewis Carroll.  \nAJP: Some adults and scholars view play and children’s literature as lightweight pursuits, but you find meaning where they intersect. What would you say to those who do not?  \nMorgenstern: I’d say read The Logic of Sense; it is a profound work. In fact, any study of how we are constructed as human subjects must take into account the nature of children’s play, and that is precisely what children’s novels do. The notion that adult novels are superior to children’s novels is based largely on the assumption that irony is superior to humor. That’s an assumption we need to correct.  \nAJP: When you set out to examine the relationship between play and children’s literature, where did you go, other than to Deleuze?  \nMorgenstern: When I began, I had no idea I was going tobe dealing with play. I started with a historical study of the rise of literacy, and that led me to ponder what happens when children at the age of six are asked to give up their play in order to be schooled in literacy. Oddly enough, I don’t think many adults stop to think about what children are doing when they play. I certainly hadn’t, and it suddenly became urgent to find an answer to that question. After extensive reading, I discovered that social scientists are not exactly in agreement on the subject. But through Deleuze, anthropologist Gregory Bateson, folklorist","cbCaihhOcCGNMKnz","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaihhOcCGNMKnz","pdf",132160,"English","# An interview with John Morgenstern\n## Reading as a form of play\n## Children’s novels and phantasmagoric play","[{\"question\":\"Why does John Morgenstern see children’s novels as a gateway to play?\",\"answer\":\"He argues that reading generates images and functions as a kind of playing, so children’s novels enable readers to return to a lost form of phantasmagoric play.\"},{\"question\":\"Which book does Morgenstern cite as influential in understanding reading as play?\",\"answer\":\"He highlights The Logic of Sense by Gilles Deleuze as central to his discovery that what he was doing as a reader was playing.\"},{\"question\":\"What does “phantasmagoric” play mean in Morgenstern’s theory?\",\"answer\":\"It refers to a play form where texts create images and where play involves the ludic construction and deconstruction of irreality, connecting play with dreaming and daydreaming.\"}]","the Children’s novel as a Gateway to Play - An Interview with John Morgenstern | PDF",1792072643,15]