New Book Revives Lost Notions of Boyhood

New Book Revives Lost Notions of Boyhood

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202064,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/ncuqe

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

By Wendy McElroy

Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails are what readers of a surprise
bestseller are made of.

The Dangerous Book for Boys by the British brothers Conn and Hal
Iggulden is a practical manual that returns boys to the wonder and
almost lost world of tree houses and pirate flags. It celebrates the
art of teaching an old mutt new tricks and accepts skinned knees as an
acceptable risk for running through fields with the same dog yapping
along.

As of July 3, The Dangerous Book is the number one seller on Amazon UK
and it is holding steady at about 7,000 on Amazon in the U.S., where it
was published on June 5. The Australian News reports that the book "has
made it to the top five of...Amazon [Australia], after just a week."

Those results make publishers take notice. But social commentators are
also reacting with both applause and condemnation.

Condemnation arises because The Dangerous Book breaks the dominant and
politically correct stereotype for children's books. It presents boys
as being deeply different than girls in terms of their interests and
pursuits. Although it is highly probable that bookstores will sell the
book to girls who then will go on to practice skimming stones,
nevertheless the genders are separated within the book's pages.

The authors clearly believe that the majority of children interested in
learning to build a catapult are boys. Girls are included only through
a final chapter in which boys are admonished to treat them with
respect.

In celebrating old-fashioned boyhood and providing a blueprint on how
to reclaim it, The Dangerous Book is revolutionary. It discards decades
of social engineering that approaches children as being psychologically
gender neutral. The book implicitly rebukes school texts that strip out
gender references. Instead, it says 'boys will be boys'; they always
have been, they always will be, and that's a good thing.

Thus The Dangerous Book achieves social revolution without preaching or
politics; it does so in the name of fun.

The sort of fun promoted has also raised eyebrows. In a society that is
preoccupied with safety, The Dangerous Book promotes activities in
which boys are likely to get scuffed. This is a book for tree-climbers
who occasionally pause to decipher enemy code or erupt into
wood-wielding pirate fights.

Why would the Iggulden brothers imperil children?

Clearly they do not think the rough-and-tumble of boyhood constitutes a
health hazard. Perhaps they agree with parents who view
over-protectiveness to be a greater danger, who wish to stir the
imagination and muscles of their children instead.

But the brothers wish to achieve more than this. In a world where
children are isolated behind computer screens and iPods, they wish to
establish a niche for old-fashioned childhood.

The brothers state, "In this age of video games and mobile phones,
there must still be a place for knots, tree-houses and stories of
incredible courage." They advise children to "play sport of some kind.
It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it replaces the corpse-like
pallor of the computer programmer with a ruddy glow."

Their vision is not utopian or even impractical. For example, a tree
house requires only a blueprint, some scrap lumber and a willing
parent. The latter requirement turns The Dangerous Book into something
more than a work for boys. It is also a guide for parents, especially
for fathers who wish to establish an old-fashioned connection with
their children.

Indeed, since parents purchase most children's books, it is reasonable
to assume that the run-away success of The Dangerous Book is partly due
to their longing for a better connection.

One father describes his experience with the book, "I gave it to my
11-year-old son Charles and his friend...Then I stood well back."
Raised on The Lord of the Rings, "they immediately turned to the
section of the book that showed them how to create their own
Legolas-style archery kit, using bits of old branch no longer needed by
the Ents. When they began stripping the bark off with a big, shiny,
sharp-bladed Swiss Army knife, I had to dig down deep in order to
ignore the parental risk-ometer readings that were going off the scale,
accompanied by vivid flash-forwards of the inevitable long,
bloodstained-bandaged hours ahead in casualty."

Happily, the only injury was to evildoers who lurked in the garden
shrubbery.

These days, the news about boys is not happy and often contains the
word 'crisis.' The Education Sector, a non-profit think tank, offers a
typical description of the perceived 'crisis' within education.

"After decades spent worrying about how schools 'shortchange girls,'
the eyes of the nation's education commentariat are now fixed on how
they shortchange boys. In 2006 alone, a Newsweek cover story, a major
New Republic article, a long article in Esquire, a 'Today' show
segment, and numerous op-eds have informed the public that boys are
falling behind girls in elementary and secondary school and are
increasingly outnumbered on college campuses."

Society is awakening to the possibility that boys have been
disadvantaged. In past decades, what it means to be a boy has been
redefined, deconstructed, reconstructed, politically analyzed and
mathematically modeled. In the process, the meaning of being a boy's
father has become jumbled as well.

In the midst of the confusion, The Dangerous Book brings non-political
truths into focus. For example, most boys like rough-and-tumble. They
are riveted by tales of heroism on blood-soaked battlefields. They will
learn history eagerly if it is presented in a chapter on Artillery.

Like Peter Pan, the Iggulden brothers have rediscovered the Lost Boys
and are beckoning for them to come out to play. "Oh...and bring along
your father too," they add with a dangerous wink and a smile.

Wendy McElroy is the editor of ifeminists.com and a research fellow for
The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. She is the author and
editor of many books and articles, including the new book, "Liberty for
Women: Freedom and Feminism in the 21st Century" (Ivan R.
Dee/Independent Institute, 2002). She lives with her husband in Canada.

Personally, it recalls my girlhood of fort-building, tree-climbing,
shipbuilding and battle-reenacting. (As well as doll clothes making,
cooking, and reading and so on.)

I never had a Barbie. (My mother thought them obscene, and I agree.)

I agree that excessive safety mania coupled with too many organized
activities has taken a lot of this kind of fun out of childhood. (Even if
your child wants to do this stuff, he or she is likely to find that all the
other kids are in a "program" every day and there's no one to play with.)
Too bad they think such things are mainly for boys, though. I'd rather see
this kind of fun reclaimed for ALL kids.

In article .com,
Fred Goodwin, CMA wrote:
New Book Revives Lost Notions of Boyhood

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202064,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/ncuqe

By Wendy McElroy

Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails are what readers of a surprise
bestseller are made of.

The Dangerous Book for Boys by the British brothers Conn and Hal
Iggulden is a practical manual that returns boys to the wonder and
almost lost world of tree houses and pirate flags.

Interesting little error in this article!:
As of July 3, The Dangerous Book is the number one seller on Amazon UK
and it is holding steady at about 7,000 on Amazon in the U.S., where it
was published on June 5.
^^^^^^

As far as I can tell it has *not* yet been published in the US!
Intrigued by the article, I dropped in to the local *&!*@ chain bookseller
[sorry -- I'm mad because our local independent has just had to close
its central store...] to take a look. It was nowhere to be found, and
not even in their database! So when I got home, I checked amazon.com.
Again, no trace. (It is of course on amazon.co.uk, apparently number 1,
as the article says.)

Realizing that tha author of the article is in Canada, I checked amazon.ca
and sure enough it's there (but released on June 25, not 5th!) How she
got the above number, I have no idea.

Hope it shows up soon, as I really want to have a look!

-- Pete --

--
================================================== ==========================
The address in the header is a Spam Bucket -- don't bother replying to it...
(If you do need to email, replace the account name with my true name.)

When I was young I used to go out and play in streams, ponds, and the
like. By myself.

I took my son to the river to do a bit of pond-dipping.

His mother made me take chemical disinfectant to wash his hands
afterwards!

In article . com,
wrote:
When I was young I used to go out and play in streams, ponds, and the
like. By myself.

I took my son to the river to do a bit of pond-dipping.

His mother made me take chemical disinfectant to wash his hands
afterwards!

That stuff might well be mroe dangerous than the pond. :-\
--
My son reviews _Come Back, Amelia Bedelia_:
"This book is scary, because it's about creampuffs."
spankin' new reviews and blog: http://bunnyplanet.blogspot.com/

In article ,
(Wendy E. Betts) wrote:

In article . com,
wrote:
When I was young I used to go out and play in streams, ponds, and the
like. By myself.

I took my son to the river to do a bit of pond-dipping.

His mother made me take chemical disinfectant to wash his hands
afterwards!

That stuff might well be mroe dangerous than the pond. :-\

Not if you're talking about something like Purell.

And, given the amount of giardia (sp?) in our water these days,
disinfecting after playing in a pond is not such a bad idea.

(Keep in mind that this is from someone who doesn't use anti-bacterial
ANYTHING in her home, because she believes that it generally serves to
breed stronger bacteria. I mean, other than regular soap or detergent
and water. I avoid the stuff labeled "anti bacterial". However, the
"waterless" stuff that's being sold to clean your hands when you are
where you can't get to a sink is something I DO keep around for picnics
and stuff -- and, as I said, is probably a good idea after pond dipping.)

Heck, I'm told that even the water in the Boundary Waters (where I used
to drink straight from the lakes) is contaminated and not safe to drink.

--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

In article ,
dragonlady wrote:
(Keep in mind that this is from someone who doesn't use anti-bacterial
ANYTHING in her home, because she believes that it generally serves to
breed stronger bacteria. I mean, other than regular soap or detergent
and water. I avoid the stuff labeled "anti bacterial". However, the
"waterless" stuff that's being sold to clean your hands when you are
where you can't get to a sink is something I DO keep around for picnics
and stuff -- and, as I said, is probably a good idea after pond dipping.)

From what I've read, it's pretty ineffective. Relying on it could be a
really bad idea.
--
My son reviews _Come Back, Amelia Bedelia_:
"This book is scary, because it's about creampuffs."
spankin' new reviews and blog: http://bunnyplanet.blogspot.com/