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Product Details
Age Range: 10 and up
Grade Level: 5 - 7
Hardcover: 130 pages
Publisher: Tin House Books; 1 edition (February 23, 2010)
This book was given to my brother and I when we were 4 and 6 years old. Whenever we were "bored," our mother handed us "the book."
With comprehensive, easy to read how-to's from mumbly peg to spool tanks to cockleburr baskets, "How to do nothing" is one of the enduring memories from my childhood
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Things you can do following the instructions in this book:
Make a spool tank (a homemade windup toy that creeps forward slowly like an army tank); a "button buzz-saw;" a handkerchief parachute; a harmless handkerchief "blackjack." Make a squeaky noise with two blades of grass. Do cool things with dandelion stems and leaves. Make a little basket out of burrs. Put your name on a pencil. Give a pencil a decorative checkerboard grip. Play Mumbly-Peg with a boy scout knife. Make a bracelet out of a clamshell. Make a needle dart. Make a leather sucker. Play "killers" with horse chestnuts. Make a Spanish bolas with horse chestnuts. Make a bull-roarer, an indoor boomerang, an outdoor boomerang, several kinds of slingshot, a throwing-stick. Make a bow and arrow out of a broken umbrella. Make polly-noses from maple tree wing things. Pop jewel-weed pods. Make willow bees and cats. Make a pin piano. Make a "bavoom-thing," a peach-pit basket, a rubber-band-powered paddlewheel boat, a paper airplane, a paper helicopter, and a thing made from a wishbone that surprises people by jumping suddenly into the air.
A 1958 video interview of Robert Paul Smith can be found at YouTube, by searching for "Robert Paul Smith" or via the link www DOT youtube DOT com/watch?v=-_YucaJeqIY
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I used to read this book as a child back in the Texas Panhandle. It gave me lots of ideas on how to have fun with materials you could find around the house. I still enjoy reading it, and have shared it with my young grandchildren.
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Gave to my son. (Grown up now) He once told me when he was just a little boy that "there is always sum thin ta do mom! You can ride your bike, or color, read a book, go play in the sand, swing or watch a movie. There's always sum thin ta do!" So just last month he sent me a picture of this book and says it has the best title for a book ever. So naturally, I had to get it for him and tell him the little story of what he said when he was all of 4 years old. :) The book is full of things a kid can find to do with odds and ends you find around the house and just use your imagination.
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I first read this book when I was 12 and liked it then. Got it for my son and like it as much now as I did then. Nice easy book that will hold your interest.
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