Connected Play

This is a terrific multimethod analysis of nine-to-twelve-year-old users of the virtual world of Whyville. It contributes substantial information about an understudied population of tween digital media users and it contributes to an expansive understanding of how play in the digital world extends real-world experiences. Connected Play is an informative and yet nuanced description of the ways digital playgrounds are being used by tweens today and how these play experiences represent educational opportunities. Both children's media designers and those who study the role of digital media in children's development will find this a rich contribution to the literature.

Ellen Wartella, Director, Center on Media and Human Development, Northwestern University

A rich and insightful examination of the complex—and too often misunderstood—universe of tweens' online gaming. Connected Play not only provides a comprehensive overview of the diverse relationships and learning opportunities that can emerge out of young people's virtual world play, but also serves as a template for how to conduct a methodologically rigorous study of a digital environment and its inhabitants.

Sara Grimes, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto

For decades, Yasmin Kafai has been an essential, careful scholar of the learning interactions and possibilities between children and technology. It is unsurprising then that this volume (written with her now graduated doctoral student, Deborah Fields) is a fantastic further contribution to the field. In the book, Kafai and Fields detail their work studying the activities and culture of tweens (nine to twelve year‐olds) in the online virtual world, Whyville. What they document provides both a compelling portrait of what virtual worlds have to offer young people as well as an atlas for where further interesting work may lie.

Teachers College Record