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The thing about young children is that they are often silly. They are patently immature. Left to their own devices, they are liable to fritter away their time in unprofitable play, dreaming up all sorts of nonsense. Pokémon, superheroes and monsters might be good fun, but they’re not exactly useful, are they? Of course, the frivolity of young children would be all well and good, if early childhood were not of such critical importance. Indeed, if policy-makers are to be believed, no less than the fate of the society rests on the shoulders of small children. With the stakes so high, there can be no nonsense in the nursery: everything that cannot be enlisted within the maturation process should, indeed must, be stamped out.

A number of educationalists have begun to try to think beyond this somewhat meagre vision for childhood. Today I want to think about what, on the surface, might appear to be two quite different approaches to the ‘problem’: educationalist Peter Moss’ concept of ‘children’s spaces’(Moss and Petrie, 2002) and early childhood educator Vivian Paley’s defence of play, particularly fantasy play, in the nursery (2004). Indeed, inspired by Paley, this paper seems to have acquired an alternative title since I wrote the abstract. Not a subtitle, but an equivalent: superheroes in the doll corner. This is the subtitle of Paley’s (now classic) book, Boys and girls: superheroes in the doll corner (1984). It strikes me that the issue of superheroes in the doll corner is far more interesting when the issue of gender is set aside: when ‘we’start to unpick what it is about superheroes and monsters that so unsettles preschool educators. Shifting the terms of discussion in this …