“…Pediatricians, psychologists, and early childhood educators widely agree that children work through their serious concerns and everyday worries through dramatic play (Clay, 2020; Yogman et al, 2018). In the last 2 years, social media posts, newspaper reports, and literacy research (e.g., Brownell, 2022; Wessel Powell et al, 2022) have offered ample evidence of children playing to manage and make sense of stressful elements of pandemic life. Children have played their understandings of the COVID‐19 global health crisis by masking their dolls (Pelly, 2020), giving pretend vaccine injections to their siblings (Cray, 2020), swabbing their stuffed toys, and building socially distanced environments in their Lego playsets (Wong, 2021).…”