The American Boy's Handy Book: What to Do and How to Do It, Centennial Edition (Paperback)

~ (Author), Noel Perrin (Foreword) "IT is a pleasant sensation to sit in the first spring sunshine and feel the steady pull of a good kite upon the string, and..." (more)
Key Phrases: winter fishing, trawl fishing, cow blackbird, Kite Time, Home-Made Boats, Rear Wild Birds (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

If Huckleberry Finn were to settle down, somewhere out there in the territory, and decide to become an author, he might very well come up with a book like this one . . . evoking the kind of boyhood that nearly every American man would like to have had himself, and hope that his son (or daughter) might still enjoy. --Washington Post Book World

Today you can be privy to all these splendid secrets . . . printed on acid-free paper and sewn in signatures, it will last to be handed down to you great-grandboys. --Henry Kisor, The Chicago Sun-Times

Product Description

First published in 1882, this is a wealth of projects and games, with practical directions on how to make them, by one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America. The ultimate pre-TV, anti-couch potato activity book, it answers the question, "What's there to do?"

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Paperback: 441 pages
• Publisher: David R Godine; Centennial edition (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879234490
• ISBN-13: 978-0879234492
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #115,116 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Book for Boys (and Girls)!, February 16, 1999

By A Customer

I had a copy of this as a kid and read and re-read it to the point that the cover was more tape than original material. A wonderful guide to doing things yourself, and a welcome antidote to today's passive consumer paradigm of childhood. A fair number of the materials called for are hard if not impossible to find today, but the spirit of adaptation and improvisation that imbues this book will inspire the reader to find substitutes. Some parents may suspect the fair number of projectile- launching devices described, but the book is infinitely less violent than most child-oriented television shows and never fails to stress safety. My friends and I learned a lot of practical mechanics and crafting skills, developed our hand-eye coordination, and never shot anything more fragile than a plastic figure. We did a heck of a lot more damage to each other and our environment playing soccer and broomstick polo. My own future children will unquestionably have a copy of _The American Boy's Handy Book_ when they're old enough.

61 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars retro fun for active kids, August 24, 2004

By	audrey (white mtns) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Filled with black & white illustrations and schematics, this guide for American boys, originally published in 1882, is organized by season and is chock-full of instructions, suggestions and advice about kites, fishing, knots, telescopes, tents, soap bubbles, animals, snowball warfare, puppets, kaleidoscopes, whirligigs, costumes, decoys--even fireworks!! The emphasis is on building things yourself, and to that end it is an extremely valuable handbook for our increasingly passive society. There are definitely things here that will give you pause or that are culturally dated -- like making a blow gun, trapping and raising wild animals and taxidermy at home -- but that is where parenting comes in, and all-in-all I would say this is a valuable and exciting book for kids, filled with pragmatic insights and a fun historical document as well. Snowball war, anyone?

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great, highly recommended!, May 19, 2005

By	Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The American Boy's Handy Book: What to Do and How to Do It (Paperback)

This book was originally published in New York City, in 1890. It is the work of Daniel Carter Beard (1850-1941), a fun-loving boy-at-heart, who organized a boy's organization (the Society of the Sons of Daniel Boone) and was later instrumental in the establishment of the Boy Scouts of America. This book is a wonderful collection of projects that a boy can make, everything from kite making and fishing to tying knots and camping. Sound familiar?

Overall, I found the projects to be quite interesting. Some of them are a little out of step with modern sensibilities, such as putting broken glass onto kites to make "war kites," or making blowguns. But, that said, this is a great book with a lot of interesting projects, one that I am very glad that I got. So, if you have a young boy, and are interested in Scouting, or just plum making things, then this book is for you. My son and I highly recommend it to you!