Winner of the 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year for Older Children (age range 8 to 14 years)
Parlour Games for Modern Families sets out to revive the tradition of indoor family games: push aside the consoles, turn off the telly, and bring some mental stimulation, silliness and laughter, joy and connection back into your living room.
This book is bursting with games of logic and memory, wordplay, card games, role-play, and rough and tumble. Not a single game requires equipment that you won’t find in your average home: a pack of cards, a dictionary, an hourglass, dice, paper and pen.
Games are organised thematically and referenced for age appropriateness. All are set out with clear rules and instructions. There are games that will challenge and stimulate you, and games that will have you in fits; games that can last all night, and games to fill that empty half-hour before tea; games for adults and older children, and games for your four-year-old’s birthday party.
Parlour Games for Modern Families, a book for fun-lovers aged four to 104, winds back the clock to remind you of games you’d forgotten and then a whole lot more. Whether you dip into it as the urge takes you or read it from cover to cover, a very good time is guaranteed.
‘In this day and age, it's hard to prise the kids away from their electronic equipment (TV, computers, game consoles and on the list goes), not to mention you, the parent from your chores. But this little corker of a book should help you out. Written by two mothers, it's packed full of fabulous games that families used to play years ago ... Gather up the clan into one room, choose a game (Farkle, Pontoon, Flip the Kipper or Picture Consequences, perhaps) and have a bit of genuine fun, and family time.’
Herald Sun
‘What a fascinating book it is, there's history, literature, cooking, lots of humour, and some droll one-liners ... Parlour Games for Modern Families will be an invaluable resource book for rainy days, heatwave days, impossibly windy days, and all Melbourne's usual weather surprises. It's a book that every family should own.’
Dr Gwenda Beed Davey, Neos Kosmos
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‘This will take you back. Remember when you played cards or knucklebones or noughts and crosses? Or made chatterboxes, those devices folded from a square piece of paper that you flipped open between your thumbs and forefingers with wishes and dreams under the numbered flaps? Or what about charades, murder in the dark, I spy or hide and seek? This book has the lot. It may even wean you off the telly. Remember blind man's buff? What about conversations, in which players discuss a topic by starting each sentence with a consecutive letter of the alphabet? Great family fun.’
Marc McEvoy, Sun Herald
‘Wink Murder, Memory, Charades, Twenty Questions — the authors of this book sat musing over all the forgotten parlour games they used to play as children and decided they wanted a book of games, so they wrote it. With a passionate introduction that calls for the reintroduction of parlour games into family life, the authors put forward a case for family members connecting with each other via old-fashioned unplugged fun.’
Sunday Mail
‘We all agree that children should watch less TV (insert finger wag here), but Jones and Tsintziras have actually done something about it. Written with both adults and kids in mind, Parlour Games sounds like it should be a sort of ‘June Dally Watkins does recreation’ — a bit naff and dull — when in fact it is the opposite. Our favourite section, Games with a Straight Face, says that "if you are tense... what you probably need is to excavate your sense of humour.’
Millie Stein, Time Out Sydney
‘A must for all family gatherings this festive season ... and it won't get you all hot and bothered. In a word: Fun’
Townsville Bulletin
‘As the book promises, there’s mental stimulation, joy, connection, silliness and laughter.’
West Australian
‘Here's a book brimful of ideas for family fun — and there are no power cords or batteries involved! Great games and ideas to entertain on holidays — and more.’
Julie Redlich, Woman's Day
‘Who knew you could have this much fun without power cords? I love this book.’
Catherine Deveny
‘I was expecting to meet with a wall of resistance from our computerised children. But far from it: they all eagerly threw themselves into the game, and absolutely loved it … It was the same with all the games we have tried from this marvelous book.’
Tom Hodgkinson, The Guardian
‘Parlour Games for Modern Families ... revives games of logic and memory, wordplay, card games and role-play.’
Sarah Marino, Herald Sun
‘The book is a bid to get kids (and grown-ups) to push aside the consoles, turn off the telly, and bring some mental stimulation, silliness and laughter, joy and connection back into your living room ... This is book for fun-lovers aged four to 104, winds back the clock to remind you of games you'd forgotten and then a whole lot more.’
Geraldine Cardozo, The Senior
‘What a lovely trip down memory lane revisiting so may childhood games.’
Reading, Writing and Riesling
