The 'Dangerous' book puts girls on the side

[fgoodwin]

The 'Dangerous' book puts girls on the side

 

http://www.star-telegram.com/408/story/80188.html

 

By JILL LAWLESS

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

LONDON -- Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

 

In these frenzied, media-saturated times, the lure of a simpler past is more powerful than ever.

 

That may explain the success of The Dangerous Book for Boys, a deliberately retro tome that has become the publishing sensation of the year in Britain.

 

Exuding the brisk breeziness of Boy Scout manuals and Boy's Own annuals, The Dangerous Book is a childhood how-to guide that covers everything from paper airplanes to go-carts, skipping stones to skinning a rabbit.

 

It spent months on British bestseller lists, has sold more than half a million copies and took the book-of-the-year prize at last month's British Book Awards.

 

The book will be published in the United States on Tuesday, teaching American boys -- but not their sisters -- to play marbles, make invisible ink, send Morse code and build a tree fort.

 

"I wanted to do the kind of book that we had lusted after when we were kids," said Conn Iggulden, who co-wrote the book with his younger brother Hal.

 

"My dad was born in 1923 and his father was born in 1850, and we had some old books in the house with titles like Chemical Amusements and Experiments and Fun With Gunpowder. The thing we didn't have was a single compendium of everything we wanted to do. I remember endlessly looking through these [books], generally to find things that I could make explode or set on fire."

 

A big, affable, dark-haired 30-something who writes bestselling historical novels about the exploits of Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan, Iggulden exudes boyish enthusiasm.

 

He and Hal, a theater director, researched the book for six months in a garden shed, rediscovering the lost childhood arts of secret codes and water bombs and building simple batteries and pinhole projectors.

 

"Rule No. 1 was we either had to make it or do it -- we've both read books where the author clearly hasn't made a raft or whatever, and so the instructions don't work," Iggulden said. "That meant we had to play marbles ... and skin a rabbit. A little bit grisly, that one. But then, we did make it into a stew and we did eat it.

 

"It was not a great stew. It was pretty rubbery."

 

Some parents may balk at encouraging their offspring to skin a rabbit -- or tan a hide, another skill imparted by the Iggulden brothers.

 

Conn Iggulden argues that "if you spend your life going to supermarkets, you should know where the meat comes from and exactly what's gone into it for your eating pleasure. I think that's worth doing once for just about anybody."

 

Sales figures suggest the Dangerous Book has struck a strong chord among adults concerned about the increasingly sedentary, regulated lives of today's children -- a society with computers in every classroom but often without climbing equipment in the playground.

 

Susan Watt, the book's publisher at HarperCollins, said its appeal lies in the fact that it is "a celebration as much as a how-to book."

 

"They're celebrating a romantic vision of their boyhood," she said.

 

"I also felt it has, from both the authors, a unique and genuine voice. This is nothing contrived and you can feel that. Their hearts were in everything they wrote and they enjoyed everything they wrote."

 

Some elements of the book have been changed for the U.S. edition. Cricket is out and stickball is in; the history of the British empire has been replaced by accounts of the Alamo and Gettysburg.

 

But its essence remains. There's an old-fashioned, improving tone to the book, with its chapters on famous battles and true tales of courage, its Latin phrases and rules of grammar, and "seven poems every boy should know."

 

"I don't think it is particularly old-fashioned," Iggulden said. "I think the reason people think it is old-fashioned is that it's optimistic, and an awful lot of modern books tend to be fairly cynical in their outlook -- postmodern, tongue-in-cheek.

 

"I thought, I want to write it straight and I want to write it optimistically, because that's what childhood is about. You don't have any doors shut in your face. You can be absolutely anything, you can be interested in anything."

 

It's possible to see a less wholesome side to the book's nostalgia. Girls are discussed, in a single chapter, as something akin to another species: "They think and act rather differently to you, but without them, life would be one long football locker room. Treat them with respect."

 

Girls are explicitly excluded by the book's title.

 

Iggulden is unconcerned.

 

"It's not exactly that we are excluding girls, but we wanted to celebrate boys, because nobody has been doing it for a long while," he said.

 

"I think we've come through the period when we said boys and girls were exactly the same, because they're not. Boys and girls have different interests, different ways of learning, and there's no real problem in writing a book that plays to that, and says, let's celebrate it. Let's go for a book that will appeal to boys."

 

The Iggulden brothers have sparked a miniboom in gender-specific publishing. Pocket versions of the book and a desk diary are planned. Meanwhile, Penguin is issuing The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls, billed as a book for those who "dream of making elderflower cordial and need reminding of how to play cat's cradle."

[Stosh]

I think Shakespear said it best: "Much ado about nothing."

 

Why don't they have make-up sections at Walmart for boys? Why don't they have iPods for grandparents? 3-piece suits for toddlers?

 

Marketing always was and always will be specific to different ethnic groups, genders, and ages. There is no way high heeled shoes manufactured, advertised and sold specifically for females offends me in any way. I probably won't look very good in a plunging neckline dress either, but they advertise them pretty much exclusively for women as well. If someone wants to market a book for boys, what's the big deal?

 

I have over 50 different books sitting on my shelves right now that are a collection of BSA edition books titled "Every Boys Library". The titles include: CALL OF THE WILD, TREASURE ISLAND, 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, BEN HUR, HANDBOOK FOR BOYS, THE BOY'S BOOK OF NEW INVENTIONS, and HANDICRAFT FOR OUTDOOR BOYS.

 

There's nothing that says females can't read these books. More power to them if they wish. But why can't boys read books written specifically for boys? Is there something inherently wrong with this? If there is, then there must be something inherently wrong with selling make-up and dresses to women.

 

Ever notice that since day 1 the BSA has been selling a magazine to boys called "BOYS' LIFE" and no one seems to be all that upset about it?

 

Remember: only a fool stands up in a canoe.

 

:^)

 

Stosh

 

[mtm25653]

As a child (a girl), I preferred the Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew. I was a tomboy who hated dolls and frilly things. If my brother had had the Dangerous book, I probably would have avidly read it, but he would have been more likely to build/do the things in it.

 

As the mom of 3 boys, I understand that boys are fundamentally different than girls - my boys have done things that would never have occured to me, or appealed to me, as a girl, even a tomboy. They had the American Boys Handy book, and a few other books of pranks/tricks/building (not crafts). But mostly, they just did things, figuring them out instead of reading the directions, like the blacksmith's forge my 15 yo built last fall - he'd seen them and used them, but he didn't read a book to learn how to build it - he just built it.

 

I have no problem with pitching books or products to girls only or boys only, with the understanding that some girls will like the boys' things, and some boys (though probably fewer) will like the girls' things.

[packsaddle]

I am sympathetic to the girl who envies her brother in scouting. Around here there simply was no good option for my daughter who would have been a far more accomplished scout than most of this unit, and who IS a far more accomplished outdoors'person' than most everyone I know, me included.

But she didn't get the good feeling of recognition of her accomplishments by a unit, only by her dad - and as much as I know that is important, peers would have been nice as well. For this reason, I wish BSA was coed like in so many other countries.

 

mtm25653, at the same time I also agree with you. I married a woman who was a 'tom boy' or whatever and who was very much into the outdoors. We resolved to raise our children with no gender bias, and also with as little external prejudice as possible...thinking that nurture was as powerful as nature. WHAT were we THINKING? Our conclusion: nature rules - and the best nurture can do is to nudge it a little now and then. Oh, and clean up the messes.