The Daring Book for Girls
The Daring Book for Girls is a handbook for girls of today, intended to capture the spirit of youth and show us how to have fun without the help of electronics—cards, bird watching, God’s eyes, jump roping. It’s like Girl Scouts without all the cookie pushing.
Flipping through the activities, I found a few that I could do with my daughter even at her young age – flower pressing and cloth-covered books, for instance – and my son enoys the activities too. So really, it’s not just a daring book for girls, but for children. If you pick up a copy of the Dangerous Book for Boys (the book thanked in the acknowledgments) then you’ve got a whole array of activities for kids that have nothing to do with video games, iPods, or DVD players.
The Daring Book for Girls is a bit of a time machine, taking me back to the days of when I used to walk next door to knock to ask if J can come out to play, and we would spend the next six hours outside, riding bikes, roller skating, and possibly playing tricks on the big brothers and vice versa. This book caters to both the modern parents’ memories of how things used to be and our desire to create that for our kids.
The book starts with an “Essentials” list – no make-up involved with the list whatsoever. Yes! I can already tell I’m going to like this book, because most of the How to Be A Modern Woman books these days involve looking sexy while you’re being all you can be—my description of them is best described by quoting Gwyneth Paltrow as Dixie Normous in Austin Powers Goldmember: “I may just be a small town FBI-agent, slash single mother. But I’m still tough…and sexy.”
The Daring Book for Girls is not about make-up, it’s not about losing weight or dressing stylishly, and it’s not at all about how to tell if so-and-so likes you. In fact, the “Boys” section is one page, and it basically tells you to be yourself and never change for anyone. That’s why this book rocks.
In addition to the activity pages are bathroom reader style bios of strong and smart women, including an especially exciting couple of pages that feature the derring-dos of none other than female pirates (aaaargh!!!!). I admit to being disappointed that the only card games they choose to teach are Hearts and Gin Rummy. Come on, people — Spades, Euchre, Montana, Masters, Pinochle, Canasta… that’s what I’m talking about. But overall, it’s a refreshing book to share with my kids. No pretenses, all fun. As my good friend Matthew McConaghey might say, just keep living.
Things to know about this book:
Buy the book here.
More about the book here.
Want to read books like this? Go here.
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I’m so glad to hear of another person that likes these books. I was eyeing it (and the one for boys) up at the bookstore the other day and decided I’d wait to get them. I think I may pick them up for Christmas.
P.S. Thanks for the well wishes.
We’re getting that for The Girl for Christmas!
Very interesting! I’ll have to take a look at it when I see it in the stores. While I don’t have any little girls, I’m always curious to see what kinds of things are being promoted.
We were just perusing this for our daughter’s birthday. Thanks for the review!
Oh! I want to come over to your house and play cards!
I love the fact that the part about boys is only one page long. That just says it all.
As a kid, I loved exploring, climbing hills, looking for birds’ nests and caves. It just kills me to see kids huddling around computers and TV sets, and I can’t stand those magazines for girls that are nothing but ads for make-up, lurid stories, and articles about skin and how to get boys. Books like this give girls the idea that it is okay to have different priorities instead of slavishly copying other girls to look trendy and ‘get a boy.’ Yuck.
My perfect SIL just ordered that for my bigirl for Xmas!
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