Heinz-Hermann Köhler grew up in a country village in Lower Saxony. In 1936 after completing elementary school, he moved in with relatives in nearby Hildesheim, a mid-sized provincial town, so he could attend the Agricultural School. In contrast to the relatively homogenous and intimate village of his childhood, Hildesheim's economic and social composition was diverse. People of many different classes, occupations, and religious faiths lived and worked in close proximity. Heinz-Hermann fills most of his watercolors and pencil drawings with the rich texture of town life: the games children played, the work adults did, and the movement of vehicles. He also depicted holiday celebrations which, in light of the recent Great Depression, display a relative wealth of decoration and toys that must have impressed him.

Heinz-Hermann was also impressed and influenced by the politics of the Third Reich. In the run up to a plebiscite, he captured the plethora of flags and calls for a "yes" vote on the street. In "Help Them!," Heinz-Hermann imaginatively enters into the domestic space of a typical German farm family, annotating that they have "no work/nothing to eat/the stable is empty." If he is personally familiar with their plight, he nonetheless views the farm from the outside, in a style otherwise associated with romantic images of the countryside but that is here framed by a political slogan: "Give to W[inter] H[elp]." Young Germans were often encouraged to raise money for this Nazi charity; here Heinz-Hermann reiterates a charged political appeal for charity and solidarity with farmers who are implicitly fellow "Aryans."

These images are rather different from classic propaganda images of Nazi parades, rallies, or broadsides, but they are not innocent of Nazi politics. What do they tell us about how Nazi politics operate in everyday life? The artist captured the dynamism of capitalism, urbanity, and modernity for instance in the broadsides he discovered on an pillar which advertised cigarettes next to calls to support 'freedom' with a 'yes' vote. What do they tell us about how children experienced the Third Reich?

Heinz-Hermann never returned to the farm. He was conscripted into the German Army during World War II to help conquer "living space" for the Aryan race. He was killed in battle.

A piñata is a decorated container of paper or clay that contains sweets, small toys, fruits, and nuts. It is the object of a game played in Mexico at children's birthday parties and at Christmas celebrations, in which blindfolded children take turns trying to break the piñata with a stick to release the treats.

Yet the piñata has a long history. Piñatas are typically made of paper-mâché, and are attributed to China where paper originated. Marco Polo is believed to have seen Chinese paper figures of bulls and other animals covered with colored paper and filled with seeds. When struck with a stick, the seeds spilled out. As part of the ritual, the paper creation was then burned and its ashes gathered for good luck. Polo likely brought the idea to Italy, where by the 14th century it was associated with celebration of Lent, and acquired the Italian name pignatta or "fragile pot." This custom spread to Spain in subsequent centuries, but involved a clay pot called la olla, derived from a colloquial Arabic word for a terracotta water jug. Paper decorations and ribbons were wrapped around the pot to make it festive.

Missionaries brought the custom to New Spain, where it encountered a similar tradition. To honor the Aztec god of war, a decorated, filled pot was broken in the temple at the feet of the god's statue. Catholic missionaries employed the colorful piñata custom to teach Christian religion. A traditional Mexican shape for piñatas is a spherical shape with seven conical points symbolizing the seven deadly sins—greed, gluttony, sloth, pride, envy, wrath, and lust. Inside the piñata, however, were tempting sweets and treats, representing the pleasures of life. The person wielding the stick of virtue represents faith, which can defeat evil, and the treats represented the hope of reward.

This symbolic piñata became traditional at Christmas, and is shown here. Today, piñatas come in the shape of animals, cars, and cartoon characters. Making piñatas for children's parties is a major industry, especially since the custom continued to spread around the world.

The photograph, dated 1928, from the well-known ethnographic collection The North American Indian by Edward Edward S. Curtis, is a portrait of a young Piegan girl standing in front of a painted tipi, or conical tent. The label on the photograph by Curtis indicates that it is a play tipi, meaning a child-sized version of the tents used for families among this Native American group. The tipi, or lodge, is like the larger versions in every way, and is elaborately decorated, giving some indication of the importance given to the girl’s realistic play and replication of adult activity. The Piegan Indians are also known as the Pikuni branch of the Blackfoot Indians, the southernmost tribe belonging to the Blackfoot Confederacy. Their range was the Rocky Mountains area on the southern bank of the Marias River in today’s Montana.

The hand-modeled, terracotta, wheeled figurine of a bird with a ram's head was excavated from an archaeological site in the Indus Valley called Mohenjo-daro, a city that flourished between 2600 and 1900 BCE. Museum curators added the wooden axle attaching the wheels to the body as the original had not been preserved. Excavations from sites in the Indus Valley included many figurines made from terracotta, some of which were clearly for entertainment, including whistles shaped like birds, small animals with moveable heads, and toy carts. Such figurines are about 2.5 inches (ca. 5 cm) in length.

This girl is from a village in the Mossi country of Burkina Faso (a landlocked country in West Africa). The doll she is holding is a traditional wooden figurine made from one piece of wood standing on a broader base. The doll displays the characteristics of an adult woman, with suggestions of facial features and elaborate hairstyles, and usually with mature female breasts that represent the fulfillment of motherhood. Scarification [scarring] patterns on the body that traditionally mark passage to adulthood are also represented by carved patterns. Mossi dolls are typically carved by male blacksmiths and are given to girls for play. The child calls it biiga ("child"), and carries the doll about with her, tucking it into the waistband of her skirt, and pretends to feed, wash and groom it. Sometimes it is adorned with beads, cowrie shells, dressed with pieces of leather or cloth, and the girl might bring it wildflowers. In the market, a girl may place her doll on the edge of a merchant's mat and expect to receive a small sample of the wares—a few peanuts, a pastry, or a piece of fruit.

Mossi dolls are also the focus of rituals associated with motherhood. When a young girl displays her doll to older women, they may respond, "May God give you many children." At festivals, if a child gives her doll to an adult to hold, it is customary to give the child a small present when giving the doll back. Other rituals include the use of dolls to ensure fertility in marriage (accomplished by giving the doll a name). Handling the doll with care is seen as auspicious for childbearing and survival of children. Before the marriage ceremony, a young woman carries the doll on her back to the market, and a few days after marriage, she is given some straw in place of the doll and asked which sex her first child will be. Mossi dolls are passed down through female generations, and before a woman gives birth, she washes the doll she played with in childhood before washing her own baby. Similarly, the first drops of milk are given to the doll, and it is again carried on the mother's back before the infant is placed there for the first time. According to reports culled by anthropologists, these rituals were to ensure that the newborn infant's soul enters the world of its parents, called yisa biiga, or "to call the child," and "to prevent the child from returning," or gidga ti da biiga lebera me, to the world of the ancestral spirits. Women who remain childless after a few years of marriage use the dolls for votive purposes, adorning them with cowry shells and carrying them everywhere while expressing their wish for a child.1

The material culture of early childhood in the 21st century is characterized by an emphasis on biological age and related levels of cognitive and motor skill development. All types of objects, including diapers, toys, food products, and clothing, are divided into categories based on the age-appropriateness of a particular object. Descriptions of these categories commonly explain how each object functions to enable a child to attain a particular skill or reach a developmental milestone. Appeals to medical and developmental science are common. Toys are marketed using age ranges for which the product has been deemed appropriate: "Ages 4-8" or "Ages 3 and Up" for example. Each of these categories is associated with specific developmental milestones, and toys emphasize how their product can help with children's developing cognitive skills, mobility skills (e.g. walking, coordination), or particular sets of knowledge (e.g., shapes, colors, numbers). Scholarship on childhood has shown that emphases on biological development are particular to contemporary western cultures and tends to reinforce ideas that childhood is a "natural" or "universal" experience regardless of time period or cultural context. Individual children, however, may experience their own developmental trajectories. Anthropological research with children from different cultures has shown that developmental sequences vary widely as different cultural settings place particular demands on the mental and physical development of young children.

The photograph shows a boy "driving" an ingeniously simple but functional toy truck made of wire, wood, and what are likely plastic bottlecap wheels. Purchased, often imported toys are very expensive and homemade toys are common in many poorer countries. A father or other relative may compensate for this by making a simple toy out of old cans and wire. Some toys like this are made for sale in urban markets; in Kampala, the sale of homemade toys provides extra income for toy makers and their families. The boy, who appears to be under five years old, was photographed in 2004 with a Polaroid instant camera in a Ugandan village by a British geography teacher on a study tour. How might this toy influence the boy's play? Compare this truck with others—both handmade and mass produced—as well as children's play activities.

This small (5.5 inches high) terracotta sculpture was made in Greek southern Italy in the late fourth century BCE. It depicts two adolescent girls playing the game of "knucklebones" (astragaloi in Greek). The game was usually played like the modern game of "jacks": one threw the knucklebones in the air and attempted to catch as many as possible. They were also used like modern "dice." Each of the four long sides of the knucklebone had a value: the convex side was worth 3, the concave 4, and the two flat sides 1 and 6. Most knucklebones were made out of the actual ankle bones of sheep or goats, but fancier ones were made of ivory, bronze, or terracotta. Children of both sexes, adolescent girls, and young women played knucklebones as revealed by statues like this one as well as paintings on vases.

This statue is both a depiction of a game and a representation of gender ideals. Whereas girls in the nearby city-state of Sparta were taught to read and write and engaged in athletic competitions, those in Athens spent their girlhoods largely indoors practicing the domestic arts (e.g., spinning, weaving, cooking, and childcare). Athenian girls typically married at the age of 15 or so and spent the rest of their lives engaged in household activities.

Motivated by wartime hysteria and racial sentiments following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that ordered the removal of Japanese Americans on the West Coast to internment camps in the interior. Children were over half of the 110,000-120,000 Japanese Americans forced to leave friends, pets, possessions—even siblings (those with severe disabilities were excluded from camps).

The social realism of Sugimoto's paintings chronicle and critique the physical dislocation, social disruption, and material deprivation experienced by children and their families. In the militarized camps located in desolate areas, children inhabited cramped and cold barracks with scarce furnishings. Children attended make shift schools that lacked basic necessities and received scant portions and stale bread three times a day at a mess hall. Unappetizing food and inadequate nourishment compromised the health and happiness of children.

Japanese-born artist, Henry Sugimoto (1900-1990), his wife, and their 6-year-old daughter were among more than 8,000 inhabitants at the Jerome camp in Arkansas where he painted this picture around 1943. This seemingly simple painting connects the bleak reality of everyday life with the play of interned children like his daughter.

Children engaged in the expressive "language" of play provide researchers with a challenging form of documentary evidence. What purposes might their play have served? As an expression of feelings about their internment? An escape from an unjust reality? A fantasy about a better place? Was their play a wish? Compare this snowman with the traditional Japanese yuki (snow) daruma (the monk who founded Zen Buddhism and who also serves as a wishing doll). What evidence is there of racial and cultural conflict? Does that explain the contrast between the snowman's luminescence and the girls' dark complexions? In what ways might the iconic American "snowman" have served as an ironic reference to the customs and values of the society that incarcerated its youngest citizens because of their race?

Theodore de Bry included this colorful engraving in his publication of Hariot's, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590). It was based on a watercolor by John White (fig. 2) painted five or six years earlier. Despite their differences, in both versions a mother is standing with her 8- to 10-year-old daughter who is wearing a string of beads and a leather string around her waist (tied to another holding moss between her legs). The girl is holding an English "puppet" or "poppet." In 16th century England, wax dolls (of adult women) like this one were mass-produced from molds. According to Hariot, a scientific advisor who sailed to Roanoke in 1585-6 and collaborated with John White while colonizing the mid-Atlantic region, the native people were "greatlye delighted” with the "puppets and babes" "broughte oute of England." The rattle, which did not appear in John White's water color, was a popular toy in early modern Europe.

Representations like these can be useful sources of information about Native-American children. However, those who produced them drew upon artistic traditions and Western cultural values in their often embellished and stylized representations of indigenous children. As a result, these visual sources must be used critically, cautiously, and comparatively. For instance, how does the girl in John White’s watercolor compare with one in the lavish engraving? Also compare the girl in the hand-painted illustration to the boy in the 1705 engraving published in The History and Present State of Virginia, In Four Parts (fig. 3).

What might account for the change in the sex of the child and the toys in their hands? Robert Beverley did write this book just a few years after his 16-year-old wife died while giving birth to their only son. In what ways might the boy also have served as a more suitable representation of emergent Enlightenment notions of childhood innocence and activity at the dawn of the 18th century?