Playing with/through non-fiction texts: Young children authoring their relationships with history

This article examines the relationship between literacy and play in six- and seven-year-olds’ engagement with non-fiction writing. I draw from a year-long ethnographic study (Erickson, 1986) of a US classroom's ‘writing time’, intentionally structured on children’s own interests and enquiries. Rather than strict adherence to monolithic models described in the school region’s mandated curriculum and assessments, the children treated genres as porous and used writing as a tool for multi-modal play. In authoring and interacting with non-fiction texts, they blended ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ worlds as they communed with historical figures on their own terms. Children used play to enquire into and manipulate the parameters of non-fiction, authoring their relationships with knowledge in the process. Through their exchanges with one another, children became familiar with non-fiction topics. At the same time, their play positioned conventional academic discourses as being open to transformation. This article makes an argument for a more synergistic conception of ‘serious’ and ‘playful’ authoring practices, and for the role of play as a component of critical literacy.