Loren, a lonely girl seeking playmates, learns the mystery of a sixteenth-century village she discovers in the coastal mountains of Oregon, a village filled with children playing games, a village painted by Pieter Bruegel in 1560.

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Chapter One
The Print

“Two-hundred four, two-hundred five, two-hundred six,” Loren counted. “Two-hundred seven children playing games.”
The painting, or rather a faded poster of the painting, hung on her uncle’s cabin wall. The title at the bottom was a good one, for it showed many children playing games in the streets of an old village. Under the title appeared the artist’s name and a year:

Peter Bruegel 1560

“All those children playing together,” Loren said. “They’re the luckiest children in the world.”
Loren turned toward her parents who sat by the stone fireplace. Her father, with white earphone in his ears, was tapping on a laptop computer, while her mother ran a finger
across an Ipad screen.
“Who’s Peter Bruegel?” she asked.
Her father pulled out the earphones. “Google him,” he said.
“He’s a painter,” said her mother. “Look him up.”
Loren’s father, a professor of biology, had come to the coastal mountains of Oregon this summer to do research on a rare type of gastropod, the five-foot long zucchini slug. Loren’s mother was a poet who wrote one line of poetry each morning and spent the rest of the day reading and thinking.
“But why is this Children’s Games painting hanging in Uncle Gig’s cabin?” Loren asked.
Her father looked toward the poster as if noticing it for the first time. “Gig must have liked it,” he said.
“Now please, Loren,” said her mother. “We have work to do.”
Loren thought about her uncle, a world famous explorer, who had disappeared in the jungles of Borneo two years ago. She missed Uncle Gig a lot. He had taken her on many camping trips and introduced her to her favorite pastimes, playing chess and tying knots. Nowadays she could beat anyone at school in chess and could tie over one hundred knots and hitches.
Loren stared out the cabin window.
Another foggy morning. The tall Douglas firs that surrounded the remote cabin seemed to grab every cloud blown in from the ocean and hold the white mist in their needled branches.
When the sky cleared later on, Loren would go outside to play among the ferns, hunt for mushrooms, or build a dam across the creek. But the thought made her weary. How tired she was of doing those things alone. How she longed for other children to play with this summer. True, Loren played online video games with her friends back in San Francisco. But this was little substitute for playing capture the flag, hide and seek, or kick the can in that vast wilderness.
“Uncle Gig must have hung the Children’s Games poster here just to torture me,” she said aloud. “I’m bored.”
“Quiet please,” said her father.
“Play yourself in a game of chess, Loren,” said her mother. “Or read a book.”
The jade chess set on the coffee table sparked no interest, so Loren went to the bookshelf by the door. The shelf held an assortment of old travel books and books on wilderness survival, most of which she had read already. But her eyes fell upon a tall skinny book on the lower shelf. The word BRUEGEL was on its spine.
“Hey, there’s a book about Peter Bruegel here,” she said, pulling out the volume.
“Shhh!” went her parents together.
Loren sat on the coiled rug in the middle of the cabin floor and plopped the book open. Inside she found glossy colored prints of Peter Bruegel’s paintings. Some paintings were happy ones. One showed people having a picnic by a hay field. Another showed peasants sitting around a long table while two men played bagpipes. But other paintings were frightening. They displayed bizarre creatures with mixed-up bodies and grotesque-looking people.
“What a curious painter Peter Bruegel must have been,” Loren said under her breath.
In the back of the book were facts about the artist’s life:
• 1525 Born in Bree, Belgium.
• Apprentice painter to Peter Coecke.
• 1552-1554 Traveled to Italy
• 1563 Married Mayken Coecke.
• 1568 Birth of son Jan Bruegel
• 1569 Died in Brussels, Belgium
Loren turned to the print of Children’s Games. “Now I know about Peter Bruegel,” she said. “But I still have no idea why Uncle Gig, a man who climbed the highest mountains on earth, crossed the hottest deserts, explored the steamiest jungles, and was a chess master to boot would have one of his paintings hanging in his cabin.”
Something caught Loren’s eyes. She
glanced toward the window and caught her breath. Was that a face? No, a mask. In the bottom corner of the glass was a white, grinning mask with hollow eyes and a big nose. One second it was there, and the next it was gone.
Loren checked the Children’s Games print in the book. How could that be? The mask in the window was the same as the one in the left hand side of Peter Bruegel’s painting.
“Someone’s out there,” she called to her parents. “Someone wearing a mask from 1560 was looking through the window.”
“That’s nice, Loren,” called her father.
“The fog’s playing tricks on your eyes, dear,” said her mother.
Loren pointed to the Children’s Games print on the wall. “No, it was that mask!” she said. “It was the same one, the white mask in the painting!”
But Loren’s father had already returned to his zucchini slug research, and her mother had resumed writing her line of poetry.

Pieter Bruegel

Contents

1. The Print
2. Nick O’ Time
3. The Covered Bridge
4. Entering the Town
5. The Town Hall
6. Around the Square
7. Knucklebones
8. Along Play Boulevard
9. The Cathedral of Games
10. The Chess Player
11. The Creepy Crypt
12. Return ot the Square
13. From the Loft
14. The Tea Party
15. The Painter
16. Loren’s Escape
17. Friends
18. The Way Home

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Large Children's Games print

Children's Games Game List PDF

List of games in Children's Game (Can you find them?)

• 1. Knucklebones
• 2. Playing with dolls
• 3. Whirligig
• 4. Blowing soap bubbles
• 5. Rattle
• 6. Playing clergy
• 7. Pop gun at a stuffed owl
• 8. Mask
• 9. Swing
• 10. Baptism procession
• 11. Play with a bird
• 12. Blind Man’s Buff
• 13. Cartwheel
• 14. Standing on head
• 15. Somersault
• 16. Riding a fence
• 17. Climbing a fence
• 18. Running the Gauntlet
• 19. Odd or Even
• 20. Play wedding
• 21. Leap Frog
• 22. Beat the Pot
• 23. Walking on stilts
• 24. Mounted Tug-of-War
• 25. Carrying an angel
• 26. Hobbyhorse
• 27. Poking a stick in dung
• 28. Drum and whistle
• 29. Calling down bung hole
• 30. Trundling a hoop
• 31. Trundling jingling hoop
• 32. Riding a barrel
• 33. Blowing a hog’s bladder
• 34. Johnny On a Pony
• 35. Keeping shop
• 36. Throwing knives
• 37. Brick building
• 38. Bouncing to make butter
• 39. Pass the hat
• 40. Run whit a cake
• 41. Pulling hair
• 42. Hunting insects
• 43. Dwyle Flunking
• 44. Row Game
• 45. Spin a hat on a stick
• 46. Procession game
• 47. Playing door keeper
• 48. Who’s Got the Ball?
• 49. Riding on shoulders
• 50. Singing door to door
• 51. St. John’s Fire
• 52. Put broom between legs
• 53. Push someone off seat
• 54. Hare and Hound
• 55. Follow My Leader
• 56. Fighting
• 57. Climbing walls
• 58. Touch Tag
• 59. Throwing bones
• 60. Little Stick
• 61. Bowling
• 62. High stilts
• 63.Hanging fence
• 64. Balance broom
• 65. Pick-a-Bag
• 66. Whipping tops
• 67. The baskets
• 68. Fluttering ribbon
• 69. Who Is to Be My love?
• 70. Doing a wee-wee
• 71. Nine Pins
• 72. Milling around
• 73. Climbing trees
• 74. Swimming
• 75. Bathing
• 76. Swim with hog bladder
• 77. King of the Hill
• 78. Dig holes
• 79. Tilting windmills
• 80. Rattle

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