NEWS RELEASE

Contact: Jan Fiderio 603.283.2107 jfidero@antioch.edu

April 20, 2011 for Immediate Release

Book Shows Parents How to Encourage Children to Play Outdoors

Wild Play is a memoir and guide by Antioch University New England’s David Sobel

(Keene, NH) - Wild Play: Parenting Adventures in the Great Outdoors, a new book by David Sobel, core faculty member in the Department of Education at Antioch University New England (AUNE), has just been published by Sierra Club Books.

Wild Play is Sobel’s memoir of integrating the experience of nature into family life with his children, Tara and Eli. It’s also a guide for parents, showing them how to encourage their children to play outdoors and engage with their natural surroundings.

“I strongly believe that the value of free play in the outdoors outweighs much of the risk that may be involved,” according to Sobel. “We have become such a risk-averse society, especially where children are concerned—partly due to the media’s harping on dangers outside the home and also to liability excesses.

“Of course there’s some risk when kids climb trees, teeter across a stream on a log, scramble up a steep trail or learn to make fires. Of course parents need to calibrate risk and use appropriate supervision. But at a certain point, a child’s need to find independence and exercise agency must be respected.”

Richard Louv, the author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature- Deficit Disorder, calls Sobel’s book “an eloquent, valuable and heartfelt contribution to the children and nature movement, and to the children and those who love them.”

Sobel is the author of six books, including Children’s Special Places and Childhood and Nature, and more than sixty articles about children and nature. He consults and speaks widely on environmental education.

About Antioch University New England (AUNE)
This is Antioch University New England's forty-seventh year as an institution of higher education. Located in Keene, New Hampshire, AUNE offers rigorous, practice-oriented, values-based master's, doctoral and certificate programs. Degrees in education, leadership and management, environmental studies and psychology reflect a dedication to activism, social justice, community service and sustainability. Antioch University New England is the oldest of Antioch University's graduate campuses. For more information about Antioch University New England, visit our web site at: www.antiochne.edu.

About Antioch University
Antioch University is a five-campus university located in four states. Each campus has its own distinct academic programs, community life and regional or national identity. Antioch University is founded on principles of rigorous liberal arts education, innovative experiential learning and socially engaged citizenship. The multiple campuses of the University nurture in their students the knowledge, skills and habits of reflection to excel as lifelong learners, democratic leaders and global citizens who live lives of meaning and purpose. For more information about Antioch University's campuses, its university-wide PhD program, or the Antioch Education Abroad program, www.antioch.edu.

Last Updated: 4/20/11