Introducing the Daring Book for Girls

The Daring Book for Girls is the quintessential can-do, how-to book for girls. It’s chock full of everything great about being a girl, and it bursts with interesting things to know, from how to put your hair up with a pencil, to the fundamentals of electricity, gardening. Robert’s Rules (see page 213!), and clubhouse building.

We wrote this book because …

Two well-intentioned British gentlemen who go by the family name Iggulden published The Dangerous Book for Boys last year, and we thought that girls would like a spirited book of activities and knowledge too.  The Daring Book for Girls is our gift to girls everywhere. It was incredibly fun to write, too

Girls don’t get to be girls for very long, and we think that’s wrong. 40 is the new 20 and 60 is the new 40. Adulthood lasts forever. But 13 is the new 30, which means girlhood has definitely shrunk. Girlhood can be an incredibly glorious time. So much is changing—bodies, responsibilities but also our abilities to know and understand more about how life works. The world starts to open up and feel bigger. The Daring Book for Girls points girls toward this kind of girlhood. The world is a big place, and girlhood is the perfect time to start exploring it—before the very real pressures of adulthood begin. To this we say: take back girlhood.

Girlhood has become high-pressured, competitive, and intense. In hearing older girls and women talk about their girlhoods, what becomes clear is for many, it wasn’t much fun. They remember cliques, mean girls, and tremendous anxiety about their bodies. They learned to diet and control their weight. They struggled to grab hold of their dreams and passions, and many felt like the lost the exuberance they had felt as younger girls. They learned to identify themselves as a certain kind of girl: whether girly-girl, athlete, brainiac, nerd. Many resent having to fit themselves into a single category.

We wrote The Daring Book for Girls with a very different vision for girlhood, one in which girls can be whoever they are, and they can follow their interests in everything—not because it gets them into a good school or college, but because life is interesting and fun. We mixed together all sorts of eclectic topics because we know that girls—and women, too—have many interests, and that they defy categories. For us, part of the book’s fun is that you can learn about campfire songs, paper airplanes (and why airplanes fly), and the letters that United States founding mother Abigail Adams exchanged with her husband, John Adams, just by turning a few pages.

We hope you enjoy the book, and we look forward to spending the month here at gather.com and meeting many of you.

And remember: Be Daring!

-Miriam Peskowitz

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