Customer Reviews

The Double-Daring Book for Girls

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Honestly, I want to hand this book to every girl I know, and the boys as well (pink typeface and Girl label be damned, this book is a powder keg of information and ideas for any kid). I am pleased that it covers so many topics I want my kids to know well, e.g., batik techniques and history (p.99), commonly confused words like imply and infer (p. 141), and the specifics of quality private eye work (p. 177).

What I truly appreciate, and what makes the Daring books transcend the How To label, is the activities' historical and often rebellious context. Why should our kids want to know how to waltz (p. 78)? How about because it was considered scandalous -- the dancing partners touched! And vulgar, forbidden -- it was easy to learn and didn't require a dance master!

Mostly, I am dazzled by the amount of good, hard, enticingly written information amassed in the Double Daring book. I want kids to know everything in it. I want them all to know exactly who Eleanor of Aquitaine was, and how startling her long, accomplished, independent life was compared to most women of her era. I want them to know the fundamentals of rhetoric, how to make a raft, the story of Ada Lovelace, how to join the circus, how to say thank you in scores of languages, how to make snowglobes, how to conduct an orchestra, and how to make rope ladders.

The Double Daring book is buoyed by positivity, and focuses on cultivating competence, independence, willingness to experiment, and open-ended fun. It provides multiple short biographies of women whose lives exemplified these attitudes. These role models are an antidote to heavily-marketed (and in some cases marketing-originated) books like The Clique series, which my daughter and her friends crave, and in which junior high-aged girls live lives of insecurity, negativity, and cruelty, while obsessing about label-spangled fashion, unrealistic body images, and social machinations. Ptui.

If you want your girls to value knowledge and abilities like they do store-bought items, get them The Double Daring Book for Girls. I truly believe it has the power to inspire and edify any child with a curious mind, while simultaneously countering media-induced materialism. It is a treasure.

How can you not like a book that tells you how to dye your hair with Kool-Aid, how to make a lava lamp, how to perform a Japanese Tea Ceremony, what the meaning of courage is, how to catch a fish, how to run a magazine, how to be a private eye, how to become President of the United States, all about the Underground Railroad, how to dance the Cotton-Eyed Joe, how to shoot pool, how to say no (and how to say yes), and -- for pete's sake -- how to run away and join the circus. And that's less than 10% of the topics in the book. The information in here is terribly important, it is positively invaluable lore and instruction.

I defy anyone to pick up this book and tell me that they made it through reading the Table of Contents without smiling, reminiscing, and also being intrigued. It's a seemingly random collection of really neat stuff that you find you are thrilled someone had the time, energy and brains to actually document. It's the stuff that's told around the campfires, discussed over dinner tables, and taught over sidewalk chalk in the driveway.

Get it for your daughter, get it for your niece, or get it for yourself. It makes a wonderful addition to any girl's book collection, and when you give it was a gift, you will know that you've struck gold.

As with The Daring Book for Girls a certain amount of derivativeness was inevitable in a book that was clearly (and admittedly) written in order to fill the niche left unfilled by the brilliant but for-boy's-only The Dangerous Book for Boys, but it was probably a mistake carrying it as far as the title. As the Brothers Iggulden point out in their justification, most boys (and only some girls) seek out danger (or at least the APPEARANCE of danger), but most girls don't. Ms. Buchanan and Ms. Peskowitz appear to recognize this, but apparently felt pressured into the rather misleading use of "Daring" in the title when "Fun" would have been more appropriate. (The only "daring" in this book are the daring deeds recorded in the exploits of the female princesses, queens, heroines, pirates, inventors, scientists, explorers, spies, leaders, athletes, and other historical figures included for inspirational purposes.)

Again the authors have assembled quite a number of fun activities for girls in pursuit of their admirable stated goals of slowing down the early termination of girlhood and the forced induction into grownup-hood, "becoming tweens and teens and adult women before their time."

Note: if you already have or plan to purchase the original book or either or both of the pocket books: The Pocket Daring Book for Girls: Things to Do or The Pocket Daring Book for Girls: Wisdom & Wonder, I can assure you that none of the material in this book duplicates anything in the first three books; neither does anything in this book depend on owning or even having read any of the first three books, though occasional reference is made back to similar items included in earlier books.

Note: Anyone who has been reluctant to purchase the original big blue book because as I and a number of reviewers have noted, it includes a handful of truly questionable activities, which devout Christians will consider dabbling with the occult, and which others may question because in the absence of supernatural powers they are arguably a big fat waste of time, have another reason for choosing to purchase this book. Having read all the way through it, I can assure them that no such offending items have been included in this book.

Rarely does a book come along that makes me wish I were a kid again. This book by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz does just that. I absolutely loved The Double-Daring Book for Girls.

Chock full of daring information, ideas and stories, this beautiful hardback would have occupied me for at least a whole summer when I was a kid. From "How to Paint a Room" to "Putting on a Show" to making your own "Worry Dolls," I would have disappeared into the daring world of ideas and instructions for putting those ideas into action.

I am thrilled that my six-year old daughter will have access to this book. It's just the antidote to video games that we need in our family.

There are plenty of nice reviews for this book already on Amazon, so there isn't alot more to say except *Buy This Book*, you wont be sorry! My 16 year old daughter very rarely has the time or inclination to read, and she loves this book! I started flipping through it and I found myself REALLY enjoying myself and learning about things I had forgot about or never knew! Its a really great book!

I absolutely love this book! I bought it since I'm going on vacation, and I already had the first book. bI love this so much! This one is even better. It teaches you cool things to do on a rainy day, and gives you the occasional history lesson! The kindle version is even better because you can simply pick a link and you're led to the page you need. I will never regret this purchase, and the price was fantastic!!!!!!!!!

As a fan of the first "daring" book (my neice ate it up as a Christmas present) I took two minutes to learn one of the "DOuble-Daring" activities to test its usefulness. I chose the art of Furoshiki, in which you wrap up various objects in a simple square cloth. Specifically, I tried the two-book carry wrap, which seems appropriate for Amazon (and for me, a voracious reader).
Results are here, at my blog [...]

What can we learn from this? Teach your girls how to play pool early (page 194 in The Double Daring Book for Girls), so they can hone their skills and put the other suburban moms to shame someday.

Check out the Daring Book for Girls web site for more info on these truly fun and uncommonly intellectually stimulating books. I'm going to get back to boning up on my two-letter Scrabble words (page 34) before my daughter and I review what to do if we're caught in quicksand (page 83) and she figures out the steps to take to become President of the United States of America (page 153).

http://jugglinglife.typepad.com/juggling_life/2009/05/i-double-dog-dare-you.html

This book is an encyclopedia of fun! The directions are simple and clear, the materials are not complicated, and the illustrations are colorful sketches of girls doing everything fun. It's got a multicultural twist too, so it can appeal to anyone. Black, brown, tan and ivory girls are playing lacrosse, hoola hoops, football, cards and cricket together.

My daughters have been poring over this book ever since it came in the mail a few days ago. My older daughter received the first book for Christmas, and at first glance wasn't too impressed. But I knew what would happen... and sure enough, it did! A few days later she came carrying it into me with her fingers in several pages. "Mom, did you see what is in this book?! I had no idea that's what this was!!"

So when the sequel came in the mail this week, she immediately nabbed it! She likes the cover colors better on this one... and the fact that it's all-new information. She's already been plotting out all the things she wants to try this summer!