The Dangerous Book for Boys: a review

I would have covered this title sooner, but the review copy disappeared from my desk the minute I brought it home, and I just recently got it back.  My nine-year-old took one peek in between the covers of The Dangerous Book for Boys (Collins 2007) by the brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden, and it was gone, spirited away to just he kind of hidey-hole fort these authors might show you how to build.

This witty compendium of how-to, How Things Work, science facts, and history lessons might well be titled 100 Things to Know Before You're Twelve. The book includes sections on making a go-cart, understanding grammar, famous battles, ciphers and codes, the basics of navigation, and tales of daring and valor straight from the kind of romantic kid-pulp mags like Boy's Life that were already starting to wilt in the face of irony back when I was a kid.

I doubt that most kids will read the book cover-to-cover, but the short articles and chapters lend themselves to boy reading styles. I imagine my son skimming through, finding something potentially lethal, and diving in with obsessive energy.  The writing is wry and warm, with just a bit of formal stuffiness for effect, and a knowing wink at the adult reader (another alternate title: A Quick Reference Book for Dads of Boys – What They Want You to Know -- reading this book may be the best quick refresher on the facts of life that boys are most interested in).
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The section on understanding girls is hilarious and contained this gem:

"Be careful with humor.  It is very common for boys to try to impress girls with a string of jokes, each one more desperate than the last.  One joke perhaps, and then a long silence while she talks about herself…"

"Seven Poems Boys Should Know" almost broke my heart.  Do boys know any poems anymore?  Poems, I said, not raps.  The idea is so fundamentally nostalgic and out of touch with the reality of modern childhood as to be painfully sweet.  Don't we wish boys still knew poems?  I'd put "Latin Phrases Boys Should Know" in the same category. (The list includes a personal favorite: Paterfamillias.)

The title has subtle irony.  There is something sweet and nostalgic about this very English book in these days when the closest most kids come to a nanny is the kind that screens porn on the net.  It's charming to think someone still considers knowing how to tie a bowline knot dangerous information in the hands of a young boy.  Indeed, there is something wistful about the kind of childhood that this book recalls – something British, and perfectly insulated.  It's a kind of childhood that, on many days, we wish we could get back for our kids, if it ever really existed at all.

One could easily read The Dangerous Book For Boys as a kind of memoir, a quasi-historical look at a certain kind of English public school childhood.  Author Conn Iggulden has made a career of looking back in his series of Emperor novels, and the misty eyed recollection of boyhood is easily excused because the implied prescription in these pages is exactly what our over-scheduled, media-saturated sons need – the plans to make a fort in a tree somewhere, and the stories of heroes to fill it with.

Clay Nichols, Health Correspondent:

Clay’s column, Dadventure, published twice monthly to Gather Essentials: Health, is a sure-fire guide to raising flawless, perfectly behaved, and always obedient children.  Yeah, right.
 
Clay is the co-author of Filmmaking for Teens: Pulling Off Your Shorts, an award-winning playwright, and the Chief Creative Officer at DadLabs.com, a fatherhood website.

You can find all of Clay’s Dadventure articles at http://gather.com/dadventure

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