Customer Reviews

How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself

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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

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 (...)

As a kid, I checked this out of the library a bunch of times. I made a lot of the stuff in this: the spool tank, the needle darts, and other things. I still "shoot" clover blossoms at people with a trick I learned in this book. I taught myself mumblypeg with it. Putting this one in the cart for the kids.