Rejuvenile by Christopher Noxon  
 

“I read Rejuvenile excitedly, eager to get to Noxon’s conclusions, feeling over and over that he was describing something I sensed was there but hadn’t quite put into words. He gets the tone exactly right, neither celebrating or vilifying. He knows these are responsible adults. And he writes convincingly about the difference between real kids and these adults-as-kids. Mostly, he responds to the evidence the way I think most of us do: he recognizes himself in the rejuveniles, he worries that his own love of Sponge Bob and Harry Potter might not be an entirely healthy thing, and he tries to figure out how in the world we got to this point. An eye-opener.”

Ira Glass, host of public radio’s This American Life

“Geezers wearing blue jeans and watching cartoons and playing videogames is not precisely what Bob Dylan had in mind (‘May you stay forever young’) back in the countercultural day. But as Christopher Noxon smartly and definitively explains, never-ending youthfulness—that is, the mass refusal to swear off fun and comfort for the sake of grown-up propriety—is the enduring legacy of the Woodstock generation.”

Kurt Andersen, host of public radio’s Studio 360 and author of Turn of the Century

Rejuvenile is better than any book out there about play. It sweeps together stories of real people being true to their core selves. This is not a book for escapists; it is a book for curious open explorers looking to lead more effective, flexible, adaptive, vital, and still responsible lives. It challenges stereotypes and gives permission to be yourself.”

Stuart L. Brown, M.D., founder and president, the Institute for Play

“Any book that inspires me to rediscover Four Square and Duck Duck Goose is A-OK with me. Rejuvenile made me want to play and it made me think—a stellar combination. Thank you, Christopher, for giving us a concept we actually need: a new, liberating redefinition of adulthood, where you can be a responsible grown-up and still maintain a sense of wonder.”

Sasha Cagen, author of Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics

“With Rejuvenile, Christopher Noxon brilliantly charts the continual turning of the Boomers, X’ers and Y’ers away from the brittle authority of work-obsessed adulthood. We seriously need more playful times, and Rejuvenile will help us get there.”

Pat Kane, author of The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living

“In Rejuvenile, Christopher Noxon identifies a profound change in what it means to be an adult in the 21st century. He does so with remarkable clarity, gentle humor, exhaustive research, and deep revelations into the transformational power of play. Noxon offers up the hope that some of us, at least, will be able to create a new model of maturity: more functional, and definitely more fun. “

Bernie DeKoven, author of The Well-Played Game: A Playful Path to Wholeness

“Christopher Noxon has the same affection for the ingenuous adults he describes as they do for their Ninja Turtles, skateboards, and Lego blocks. Noxon is an avid collector in his own right—one of compelling characters, funny stories, and insights that speak to our mixed-up times.”

Ethan Watters, former Chuck E. Cheese Rat and author of Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family?

“Noxon, whose book is breezy, provocative, and sometimes downright unsettling, worries that rejuveniles may, at some point, ‘morph from fun and free-spirited to just plain pathetic.’... But (he) also argues that today’s rejuveniles—mostly members of the urban professional classes, more likely male than female, and, in some way, a product of uncertain times—have so grown in number and influence that they are challenging our notions of what it means to be an adult… Bottom Line: (Rejuvenile is) a provocative analysis of a youth-celebrating consumer culture.”

BusinessWeek magazine (full review here)

“That fellow with the paunch playing dodgeball with his baseball cap on backward? Rejuvenile. The middle-age mother skateboarding in front of her mortified teenage son? Rejuvenile. The Barbie-collecting travel agent and the wholesome, childless Baptist couple with the annual pass to Disney World? Rejuveniles, all… The author, himself the father of three, has an engaging, humane tone and happily pokes fun at the very people he defends.”

The Wall Street Journal

“I am a rejuvenile. A dodge-ball-playing, Hula-Hooping, SpongeBob-watching, Lucky Charms-eating adult. So is Christopher Noxon. In fact, he’s textbook: male, Caucasian, affluent (or at least, in possession of some discretionary scratch). He’d be easy to spot on the playground, chasing his kids in his high-top sneakers, dripping ice cream on his concert T-shirt. Noxon’s first book, Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-up, is an attempt to get inside this growing demographic… So next time you see us out there flying a kite or roller skating or blowing bubbles, don’t judge us, you Harrumphing Codgers. We’re not simply being silly and self-indulgent. No, as Noxon illustrates, rejuvenilia is ‘something else: a ridiculous skipping frontside ollie cat leap toward an essential mystery of life that adults have for too long been discouraged from exploring. So there.”

The Los Angeles Times (full review here)

“Part pop sociology, part marketing manual, and part lifestyle manifesto, Christopher Noxon’s Rejuvenile makes the insightful case that a sea change has occurred in the way American adulthood is lived.”

The New York Sun (full review here—subsription required)

“At home and in the workplace, at the shopping mall and in pop culture, it sometimes seems the whole grownup population is going through a major regressive episode. A smart new book, Rejuvenile, confirms these suspicions, placing today’s overgrown children in a historical and economic context, giving us a framework for thinking about the trend.”

McClatchy Newspapers