In a climate where universities are shuttering or reorganizing humanities programs and administrators are insisting that course outcomes prioritize job training, reading a book that focuses on play in the classroom feels like a joyful rebellion. The chapter authors of Creating Playful First Encounters with the Pre-Modern Past, edited by Helen Brookman and Olivia Robinson, remind us that while medieval and Early Modern literature does teach us about humanity, morality, and history, among other things, that does not mean it cannot be fun; in truth many texts were intended to be playful.[.] [M]any of the[se] playful activities could be incorporated into classrooms with fewer available resources. Thanks to the diverse ways the authors interpreted the idea of "play" in their work, a reader finds modeled here a wide range of creative methods from which to choose. Just as play in general does for learning children, the activities discussed in Creating Playful First Encountersallow participants to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for the literature they worked with. Thanks to the safety of Huizinga's "magic circle," students can step out of their comfort zones and take the texts with them, transforming them into something both familiar and alien. While reading the book for this review, I imagined many ways I could incorporate aspects of the authors' creative examples of play in my own classes, and I believe that is a high compliment to the authors.