The purpose of this study was to investigate play theory orientations presented by the outcomes of play and game stories in children's picture books. Secondly, play theory orientations were investigated to discover their relationships to sex of the major characters, racial and ethnic portrayals of major characters, sex of adults in the stories, involvement of adults in the play or game experiences, and types of play and game activities. A subproblem was to determine the effectiveness of Caillois' classification of games as a typology for play and games found in picture books. Sixty-four preschool and primary school level picture books with play and game themes were analyzed. The Elementary School Library Collection (9th edition) was used as the source for the book titles. The data were collected by use of content analysis. A checklist was developed for coding the variables. Cross-tabulation tables were used to analyze the data
