Brenda Biondo Featured at the San Diego Museum of Art

By UPNE Staff

Brenda Biondo’s book Once Upon a Playground—one of our inaugural ForeEdge titles!—has recently been featured at the San Diego Museum of Art, along with some of her many amazing works of figural photography:

For more information about the artist and author, click here—and here is more information on the museum show.

Tell Us About the Time You Fell Off the Monkey Bars—and Enter a Book Giveaway!

ForeEdge and University Press of New England are basically thrilled to finally be able to say: Brenda Biondo's gorgeous photographic tribute to the bygone playgrounds of our youth, Once Upon A Playground: A Celebration of Classic American Playgrounds: 1920-1975, is available now!

The video above is just a taste of the images that will put your Americana nostalgia engines in overdrive. And it features a recent interview that Biondo did with the inquisitive hosts of "For Your Ears Only." Listen to Biondo explain what inspired her to immortalize these disappearing playground structures and find out how you can help the non-profit organization, Kaboom, build new playgrounds for neighborhoods that need them.

But wait, there's more.

We're in a good mood lately, so we're giving away THREE copies of Once Upon A Playground to three different winners. See the contest entry form below.

To better your chances of winning, share this post with your friends, and leave us a comment about a memorable playground moment of yours—what jungle gym you were the king or queen of, what merry-go-round you got pretty banged up on, maybe that first kiss underneath the coiling slide?

And thanks for liking the new ForeEdge Facebook page—like raising a playground, there are fun things in store. More ForeEdge giveaways! News and reviews about other new releases! Even more exclamation points!

This giveaway closes May 16 at 5:00 PM EST.

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When Childhood Wasn't Doctor-Approved

Once upon a time, playgrounds were death traps.

All right, maybe not quite that bad, but from the time the first jungle gym was installed about century ago, until 1975, children's safety wasn't exactly the first thing on parents', teachers', and certainly not playground manufacturers' minds.

Time was, you could lunge at a merry-go-round like catching a speeding train—and just as easily be flung several yards from it. A jungle gym was a gridwork of bars onto which you could project an imaginary kingdom of maneuvers—without a net to break your fall. And the slide—this thing was made of steel and was dizzyingly tall and stole your breath at the very top.

If in those days there was a greater risk of harm on these playground pieces, so was there a better chance of experiencing something called awe—of freedom in that taking risk.

But in 1975, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, reporting too many backsides splintered and bruised at the hands of a see-saw, targeted our nation's playgrounds as potentially dangerous. Overnight, safety was sent to the front of the line.

This spring, UPNE's new imprint, ForeEdge, launches with a book devoted entirely to the glory days of play. Once Upon A Playground, by Brenda Biondo, is a photographic celebration of those bygone and disappearing 20th-century structures, many of which Biondo discovered half-abandoned on disused lots and summer campgrounds, captured in vivid color for all time.

Biondo's photos evoke both a happy nostalgia and an undeniable wistfulness, especially as we take stock of the "approved," ultra-safe, plastic playgrounds of the modern era. Once Upon A Playground will inspire you on your own hunt for monkey bars to hang upside down on all over again.

Here's just a small sampling of the images that fill the book:

copyright Brenda Biondo

copyright Brenda Biondo

copyright Brenda Biondo

Although it releases in May, it's not too early to pre-order Once Upon A Playground.