The Dangerous Book for Boys

The Australian ^ | 12aug06 | Christopher Bantick

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The Dangerous Book for Boys

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20058973-5003900,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/or3b2

Christopher Bantick
12aug06

The Dangerous Book for Boys
By Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden
HarperCollins, 400pp, $39.95

UNAMBIGUOUSLY blokey, The Dangerous Book for Boys will have many fathers, or even grandfathers, remembering their days with crystal sets and billycarts. But are such things dangerous?

According to the brothers Iggulden, who have in place of an introduction a piece called I Didn't Have this Book When I Was a Boy, boyhood "is all about curiosity". But the kind of curiosity here is of a certain age and time.

There's nothing wrong with a fair swish of nostalgia or with a kind of conspiratorial companionship between fathers and sons as they build tree houses or look for fossils, but the authors are unabashed in their criticism of the techno world that many dads and sons inhabit. "In this age of video games and mobile phones," they hold, "there must be a place for knots, tree houses and stories of incredible courage."

While the book is very English in its feel, with just a hint that it would be the kind of tome every self-respecting male member of the Secret Seven would own, another agenda is at work: the subtle but unmistakable sense that somehow boys have missed out on the jolly good fun that used to happen in grandad's youth. Oh halcyon days!

Dangerous as the book may be in terms of getting boys to do unfamiliar stuff with their dads or by themselves, there is another kind of danger, of presenting a certain kind of boy-based cultural and hobby literacy. Mindful of how the book may be viewed, the authors say: "Is it old fashioned? Well that depends. Men and boys are the same as they always were, and interested in the same things. They may conquer different worlds when they grow up, but they'll still want these stories for themselves and their sons."

There is a folksy wisdom in their comment, "When you're a man, you realise that everything changes, but when you're a boy, you know different." Maybe.

Apart from an overuse of the imperative must, as in "These tales must be told and retold, or the memories slowly die", the book is an engaging read and contains some excellent information.

Chapters on understanding grammar sit comfortably with advice on how to make a bow and arrow. The section on timers and trip wires will have readers taking delight in booby-trapping their house. Beyond this, a tone of muscular Christianity pervades many of the pages: the Ten Commandments are included, and battles for God and king are many and extensive. The good guys win. And, as much as it is hard to imagine some savvy and sassy texting 13-year-old really bothering with morse code, the chapter on spies, codes and ciphers does not date.

The book has a strong educative theme that comes not just in the grammar pages and Latin sayings, but in the space given to the solar system and questions such as why the sky is blue.

It is also a cornucopia of rules for games (poker no less), coin tricks and how to get yourself out of sticky situations with a little thought, a catapult and a nifty clove hitch. Biggles would undoubtedly approve.

Christopher Bantick is a Melbourne-based writer and reviewer.