Book Review: The Daring Book For Girls!!!
Nov. 21st, 2007 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dampscribblerI was delighted to be tapped as a reviewer for The Daring Book for Girls,, the companion volume to the best-selling Dangerous Book for Boys, which surprised and delighted readers earlier this year and fanned the flames of a variety of controversies (boys vs girls? dangerous play?) that continue to this day. When I learned that Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, whom I was already familiar with through their website Mother Talk, were to be the authors of this volume, I was pretty darned excited and I set my expectations fairly high.
The day my review copy arrived I thumbed through the book I thumbed through it for what I considered to be a few basics -- knot tying? check! Queen Boudica? check! making a book cover? check! There were some pleasant surprises, too. Boudica is profiled as part of a series called "Queens of the Ancient World." Cleopatra is included, but so are some others I had never heard of: Artemisia of the Persian Empire and Zenobia, "Queen of the East." The illustrations are pretty. I loved the "Women Spies" section. "Telling Ghost Stories" appealed to the writer/storyteller in me. "First Aid" is a quick introduction to important first-aid techniques, and is supplemented by a page of "Important Women in First Aid." Also included are math tricks, the periodic table of the elements, and a chart of Greek and Latin root words, among many other surprises like "Negotiating a Salary."
Less exciting to me, but likely to appeal to young girls, are some more typically "girly" things -- making a friendship bracelet, a daisy chain, and cootie catchers. As these are not the kinds of skills I remember well from my own childhood, I expect to come back to them when my own daughter (now 3) is old enough to want to try them.
Part guidebook, part gamebook, part history book, part reference book, "The Daring Book for Girls" is chock-full of interesting bits and pieces I expect to come back to time and again. It's only weakness seems to stem from this very diversity -- there's so much to visit that I can't always re-visit something I saw earlier (an alphabetical index at the end would have been helpful) and the historical sections, in most cases just a page or two, are presented in a rather dry and matter-of-fact way that may fail to ignite enough curiosity in a young reader for her to decide she wants to go to the library to find out more. These flaws are minor when considering a book with this much to offer, and I look forward to coming back to "The Daring Book for Girls" as my daughter grows up and seeks adventures of her own.
For more information, you can visit the book's website: http://www.daringbookforgirls.com
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for review and will be paid a $20 Amazon gift certificate. This review is part of the Mother Talk Blog Tour for The Daring Book for Girls.
The day my review copy arrived I thumbed through the book I thumbed through it for what I considered to be a few basics -- knot tying? check! Queen Boudica? check! making a book cover? check! There were some pleasant surprises, too. Boudica is profiled as part of a series called "Queens of the Ancient World." Cleopatra is included, but so are some others I had never heard of: Artemisia of the Persian Empire and Zenobia, "Queen of the East." The illustrations are pretty. I loved the "Women Spies" section. "Telling Ghost Stories" appealed to the writer/storyteller in me. "First Aid" is a quick introduction to important first-aid techniques, and is supplemented by a page of "Important Women in First Aid." Also included are math tricks, the periodic table of the elements, and a chart of Greek and Latin root words, among many other surprises like "Negotiating a Salary."
Less exciting to me, but likely to appeal to young girls, are some more typically "girly" things -- making a friendship bracelet, a daisy chain, and cootie catchers. As these are not the kinds of skills I remember well from my own childhood, I expect to come back to them when my own daughter (now 3) is old enough to want to try them.
Part guidebook, part gamebook, part history book, part reference book, "The Daring Book for Girls" is chock-full of interesting bits and pieces I expect to come back to time and again. It's only weakness seems to stem from this very diversity -- there's so much to visit that I can't always re-visit something I saw earlier (an alphabetical index at the end would have been helpful) and the historical sections, in most cases just a page or two, are presented in a rather dry and matter-of-fact way that may fail to ignite enough curiosity in a young reader for her to decide she wants to go to the library to find out more. These flaws are minor when considering a book with this much to offer, and I look forward to coming back to "The Daring Book for Girls" as my daughter grows up and seeks adventures of her own.
For more information, you can visit the book's website: http://www.daringbookforgirls.com
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for review and will be paid a $20 Amazon gift certificate. This review is part of the Mother Talk Blog Tour for The Daring Book for Girls.
