“Child’s Play: Propaganda Puzzles, War Games, and Children’s Books”

The Wolfsonian-FIU’s exhibition “Child’s Play: Propaganda Puzzles, War Games, and Children’s Books” will open on Thursday, Jan. 17, at 3 p.m., in the Green Library at University Park, where it will remain through January 2008.

The exhibition, organized by the museum’s chief librarian Francis Luca, features children's propaganda books, magazines, board games, puppets and puzzles created as a means to enlist even the youngest members of a nation in the broader cause of the war effort.

The works on view represent the major conflicts of the 20th century: the South African (or “Boer”) War (1899-1902), World War I (1914-1918), the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and World War II (1939-1945).