Old-Time Toys

The toys that settler children enjoyed were quite different from the action figures and video games that young people play with today. Until the mid-1800s, most children's toys were homemade, often whittled from a chunk of wood on a winter's night. Later, toymakers in North America began to create a wide variety of toys, from rocking horses to porcelain dolls to automated coin banks to magic lanterns. Old-Time Toys shows young readers the wonders of nineteenth-century playthings, photographed from leading toy museums around the country.