Posted on 04/27/2007 7:33:56 PM PDT by 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."
I was never an elderflower cordial kind of girl. I preferred blasting Barbie dolls with makeshift RPGs.
In todays view I would have been considered a potential terrorist at the age of nine.
Gender specific books for young people....wow! Who wouldda thunk? Maybe Victor Appleton’s grandson has a future in writing these.
There must be a chapter on tree forts! One of my all time true admirations of the opposite sex is watching them built a beautiful treed clubhouse. Nothing more wonderful than a bunch of little guys, hammers goin’ like mad and fort taking shape.
Cool!
I don’t know. My dad did a lot of “boy” stuff (taking me hunting, playing catch, etc.) with me because he wanted a son but I was the only child. I think it helped me become a conservative. The current “girl” culture, obsessed with makeup, looks, wealth, and fluff, is going to produce a lot of “Sex and the City” wannabes.
A woman. A beautiful woman. A conservative. In California.
Yes, there is a God . . .
Girls can enjoy the book too. After my daughter is done cleaning the kitchen and folding the family’s laundry, I have no problem with one of her brothers reading to her from the book.
SLM
Chicks can read it too, just like little boys can skip rope (which is gay, unless the lad's a boxer.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.