I promised last week that I would review a book that I awarded my “Stocking Stuffer of the Year Award” as my pick for “best gift of Christmas, 2008.” It is The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz.* It is an all encompassing book of everything you ever wanted to know about as a pre-teen girl but didn’t know how to ask. In one volume, your young ladies can find out about pressing flowers, how to whistle with two fingers, double Dutch jump rope (complete with rhymes), how to negotiate a salary, bird watching, how to make a stink bomb, reading tide charts, snowballs, and Abigail Adams’ letters to John Adams. I was fascinated with the wealth of eye-opening information it contained about both the off-beat and the profound.
It took me back to my childhood when, as a boy of 8 & 9, my family lived in one of those old two-story, four bedroom homes that, to my delight, had a full basement and a full standup, walk-in attic. It was the basement and attic that drew me like a magnet on Saturdays and summer days as I indulged a strong sense of curiosity. The basement contained my brother’s hamster cages and my dad’s workshop where I made my first woodworking project, a small boat modeled after the large iron ore cruisers on the Great Lakes. I still have it.
The attic was where I discovered a fully illustrated, hard-bound edition of Gulliver’s Travels, a ready adventure for any slow afternoon. There was also a box of old National Geographics that took me around the world. But ever fascinating was the old, stand-up radio that stood facing the top of the stairs. It had a large, green eye at the top of the circular dial which lit up whenever the set was turned on. There, at the turn of a knob, were various wavelengths that advertised such exotic locations as Moscow, London, and Tokyo. I would spend hours scanning the airwaves and reading into even the most obscure static evidence of life on other continents. Those were magical days spent in stuffy attics or cruising the neighborhood on a beat up wagon, conquering the kingdoms of vacant lots, building clubhouses, or taking off on 2-3 mile walks downtown with my buddies to cruise the pet shop, model store, and ride the elevator at the five & dime.
I identify completely with the following introduction to the Daring book:
We were girls in the days before the Web, cell phones, or even voicemail. Telephones had cords and were dialed by, well, actually dialing. We listened to
records and cassette tapes—we were practically grown-ups before CDs came to pass—and more often than not, we did daring things like walk to school by ourselves. Ride our banana-seat bikes to the local store. Babysit when we were still young enough to be babysat ourselves. Spent hours on our own, playing hopscotch or tetherball, building a fort in our rooms, or turning our suburban neighborhood into the perfect setting for covert ops, impromptu ball games, and imaginary medieval kingdoms.Girls today are girls of the twenty-first century, with email accounts, digital cable, iPods, and complex video games. Their childhood is in many ways much cooler than ours—what we would have given for a remote control, a rock-climbing wall, or video chatting! In other ways, though, girlhood today has become high-pressured and competitive, and girls are inducted into grownup-hood sooner, becoming tweens and teens and adult women before their time.
In the face of all this pressure, we present stories and projects galore, drawn from the vastness of history, the wealth of girl knowledge, the breadth of sport, and the great outdoors. Consider the Daring Book for Girls a book of possibilities and ideas for filling a day with adventure, imagination—and fun. The world is bigger than you can imagine, and its yours for the exploring—if you dare. Bon voyage.
Yes, thankfully, there is The Dangerous Book for Boys which is the male equivalent. I have not seen it, but the introduction promises much the same from authors Conn and Hal Iggulden:
Boyhood is all about curiosity, and men and boys can enjoy stories of Scott of the Antarctic and Joe Simpson in “Touching the Void” as much as they can raid a shed for the bits to make an electromagnet, or grow a crystal, build a go-cart, and learn how to find north in the dark. You'll find famous battles in these pages, insects and dinosaurs—as well as essential Shakespeare quotes, how to cut flint heads for a bow and arrow, and instructions on making the best paper airplane in the world. How do latitude and longitude work? How do you make secret ink, or send the cipher that Julius Caesar used with his generals?
You'll find the answers inside. It was written by two men who would have given away the cat to get this book when they were young. It wasn't a particularly nice cat. Why did we write it now? Because these things are important still and we wished we knew them better. There are few things as satisfying as tying a decent bowline knot when someone needs a loop, or simply knowing what happened at Gettysburg and the Aamo. The tales must be told and retold, or the memories slowly die.
There are a couple of pages you will probably wish to excise with a razor blade before giving them into the hands of your children. Palm reading and Yoga are not something we wish to perpetuate, but the overwhelming majority is wholesome and exciting. You will need to read through yourself to check for content, but that will not be a hard job as you will find it telling all the stuff you wish you had known in 3rd grade. You can learn more about these books at http://www.daringbookforgirls.com/ and http://www.dangerousbookforboys.com/. The Walters family already has both books and Vashti adds:
"The Daring Book will make you long for rainy days! It was a birthday gift to our third grade daughter, Amelia, last year, and it instantly became a treasured resource. Together we've learned how to make the 'Coolest Paper Airplane Ever,' tried one of 'Three Silly Pranks,' and are longing to soon put the chapter on 'Snowballs' to good use! When asked what her favorite part of the book was, Amelia told me about a 'very pretty poem' and showed me the page. I read with new eyes, 'A Bird Came Down the Walk' by Emily Dickinson. It is such an unusual wealth of information all in one very nice hard-bound book. We gave our son the companion book for boys this Christmas and although we have not finished reading the entire book, it promises to be just as wholesome and enjoyable."
*Harper Collins, 2007, sell for @ $18.00 each on Amazon.com
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