How to Cremate a Parakeet

“An elegy - and a plea - for the kind of time and freedom that made childhood so intense, so goofy, so worth living. This book captures the “Kid Mindset” the schemes, the stupid plans, when you could refashion the world seven times in an afternoon.”

-Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids and co-founder of Let Grow.

“With the wealth of parenting how-to books flooding the market, one might believe there is little room for another. Enter How to Cremate a Parakeet: And Other Tales of an Adventurous Childhood, a hilarious blend of memoir and parenting guide that tackles topics other books won’t touch.”

-D. Donovan, Sr. Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

Chris has had the extraordinary good fortune to be able to play virtually every day of his life. Somewhere along the way, people started paying him to do it. He became an internationally recognized expert on toys, play, and kids, better known as the Toy Guy®. But if you ask Chris, he learned about play much earlier, growing up in Wilmington, Delaware, with his brothers and neighborhood friends. He’s always believed that play always begins with the question, “What if?” It’s a question that has guided his life and when asked about his career he says, “I made it up!” That may be why, more than 35 years into a career in the toy business, Chris still believes that play is serious business.

He has held marketing and creative positions in toy companies, and regularly appears on local, national, and international television promoting the essential nature of play for everyone—for all our lives. His books include:

• Toy Time: A Look Back at the Most Beloved Toys of the 1950s to the 1980s
• Funny Business: Harnessing the Power of Play to Give Your Business a Competitive Advantage
• They Came to Play, a history of the Toy Association and the toy industry.

His textbook, An Introduction to the U.S. Toy Industry: Serious Fun, is a standard, and his Audible course, A History of the U.S. Toy Industry 1900-2024, gives the colorful history of toys and the times. His TEDNext talk, Play for a Lifetime, explores why play mustn’t end when childhood does.

And then there is his other life. Chris was a child actor, has always loved theater, and studied directing at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts. Since 1996, Chris has been a theater critic in New York, writing more than 1,000 reviews for Gay City News, among others. He’s the author of A Man of Much Importance: The Art and Life of Terrence McNally. He’s a member of the Drama Desk, and the Association of American Theater Critics and Journalists.

Chris lives in New York City, where he continues to work, work out, write, go to the theater, think about toys, and look for opportunities to play.

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