WHEN TOYS COME ALIVE - NARRATIVES OF ANIMATIONS, METAMORPHOSIS AND DEVELOPMENT

In this extraordinary book, Lois Rostow Kuznets studies the role of toy characters in works ranging from older classics like Pinocchio, Winnie the Pooh, and The Velveteen Rabbit, through modern texts like The Mouse and His Child and the popular comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, to the latest science fiction featuring robots and cyborgs. Using a variety of intertextual critical approaches, including feminist theory, neo-Freudian Winnicott play analysis, structuralism, and neo-Marxism, Kuznets focuses on how toy characters, like children`s play, can be associated with deep human needs, desires, and fears.