Games and lore of young Americans Book

I've had a copy of Opie's "The Lore & Language of Schoolchildren" for nigh on forty years & always loved reading of the similarities & discrepancies in children's games & rhymes up & down the country. This differs in that the book revolves around the children in one particular school playground covering the school years January 1978 through to summer 1980. My own time in infant & junior school was late 1960s, early 1970s so I was looking forward to see if the games were much different a decade on.

The blurb tells you all you need to know about the content & format....& it literally is Opie writing everything down that she sees & hears. This diary-style writing came over flat & uninspiring to my mind, the noise, the clamour & general hurly-burley I'd associate with playgrounds was lacking.

Many of the clapping & skipping games, & some of the rhymes I remembered but they didn't invoke the nostalgia I expected. I found some of the footnotes a bit odd but then the references they related to were well known to me &,I suspect, to almost everyone of my generation. While I can see that those of a younger age or indeed a different nationality might find them useful, I can't see this book having much appeal to them in the first place.

Overall, a reasonable read for those, that like me, were at school around this time but a monotonous & rather dry recounting means it lacks the charm it could have had.