The Daring Book For Girls

Book Review – MotherTalk Inc Book Tour. 

Please note that as part of the BlogHer contractual stipulations, I am not allowed to accept the $20 Amazon gift voucher for participating in the book tour. I am doing it out of love ;-)

The Daring Book For Girls is written by two fabulous women. One of whom happens to have written one of best books of all time – MotherShock – Loving Every Other Minute. That book saved my sanity. 

This book is a great book. It is very well put together, well researched and an absolutely fabulous read for any girl, no matter how big or small. The contents page reads like a wish list for an absolutely fabulous adventure and includes chapters on knots and stitches, how to tie a sari, slumber party games, campfire songs, how to whistle with two fingers, etc. In other words, stuff that any Daring Girl would love to know. It really is a lovely book; both fun to read and beautifully illustrated.

Having said all of that, I am really pissed off that this book had to be written in the first place. Really. This has nothing to do with the wonderful job that the two authors did, or the book itself, but the fact that the book is basically a result of the hoo-hah around an earlier book entitled “The Dangerous Book For Boys”. People got their self-righteous PC knickers in a knot because someone had DARED create something that was aimed specifically at boys.  It really chaps my arse. I don’t want to go off on a tangent here (although seeing as this is a ‘for love’ review as opposed to a ‘for gift voucher’ review, perhaps I am allowed to), but honestly, I am so sick and tired of the ubiquitous beige that we enforce on everyone. It is all so PC, so sanctimonious and frankly, all so very, very boring. 

Not that I feel strongly about this or anything like that.

So, besides my little rant above, the bottom line is that this is a fabulous book. For Daring Girls or Dangerous Boys. Go read the other reviews here. Or even better, buy the book here.

Comments

[21stCenturyMom]

I reviewed this book, too and I really liked it but I agree. What we really need is The Daring and Dangerous Book for Kids. That would be fabulous. Shall we write it together?

[Andrea]

AMEN TERTIA! I was so angry when I saw this on the bookshelves at Target. I'm tired of being PC, and I don't want to hear anymore B-effing-S about not being fair to girls. Anymore all the world does cater to IS girls. It's like the male population should feel bad for having something to themselves. They can't golf alone, they can't play football alone, they can't have men's clubs, they can't have a job without being told their pay is only that way not out of merit but because they have a penis (which is NOT ALWAYS TRUE!), and now they can't even have a fricking book without overly dramatic feminists getting their granny panties in a bunch.

The book is probably fine. It's not about the book - it's the simple fact that a previous book having the words "For Boys" was made to look sexist when it was merely having fun with boys. If that's how it's going to be, then we'd better stop selling shampoos aimed at brunettes, blondes and redheads, because my goodness, someone with purple hair is going to get pissed!

[Flower Fairy]

What people get their knickers in a twist about! Honestly I don't know...most the time it is so not worth it. When I saw the girl version recently at my bookstore and the others like it I thought of your post and the 'boys' one and the who-ha it created.

[Orange]

Chill out, Andrea. In a world where girls get raped more than boys, you can hardly say that everything caters to girls. Half the stuff that caters to girls is effing makeup, hair, and play kitchens, stuffing them into the same tired old mold. It's hardly the same as spoiling them. I get tired of feminists being accused of wearing granny panties.

That aside: Thanks for the reminder, Tertia! I was planning to get this for my 12-year-old niece for Christmas. I'll get the Dangerous book for her 14-year-old brother, even if he's too old for it—I'll bet he'll still find some cool things in there.

[Megan]

I bought the Dangerous Book for Boys for my male Child and he was allowed to admire it for... maybe half an hour before the females of the family wrested it out of his hands and had a good and thorough read. Great book. And neither of my girls felt left out, oppressed, meaningfully downgraded or otherwise psychologically injured simply because there was "boys" written on the cover.

However, the "l'il ho, pimp your belly shirt" series of dolls is another matter entirely.

[brenda]

The publishing plan was always for two books. So it's not "basically a result" of any hoo-hah.

[Lynnette]

I didn't get pissed off, I just bought both books for my girls. (marketer''s wet dream, I am) I hope they love them as much as I loved crap like that when I was little. Now, off to buy a stereotypical kitchen playset on clearance at Tuesday Morning...la la la...{sound of me, off in my own little non-PC, yet fun, world...)

[Jess]

Brenda, I've read that the authors of the book for girls pitched it to the publishing company AFTER the book for boys came out and started to get criticized. I'm not sure how true that is exactly, but that's what I've heard on other blogs.

I hated this book. Honestly, I thought I'd like it, and bought it for some girls in my life but when I paged though, I hated it. Roberts rules? NOT FUN. Finances, writing thank you notes, understanding boys, math tricks? Not what I expected, to tell you the truth. And the pranks they explained are lame.

I know that sounds mean. I think there was just too much hype or something...I got over excited.

[ms]

Apologize in advance for the long comment...

I don't know about needing to be 'beige' - suggesting that everyone enjoys (or should enjoy) the same things equally would be silly. But I'm genuinely curious: do you think that there are some activities or interests that should be marked off as "for boys"? Because that is the implication that bothered me about these books - "this stuff is for girls, this is for boys". I find that worse than silly. Because once that suggestion is accepted, the natural question is: ok, what are the boy things, what are the girl things?

I always like reading bits about your work life, because you come across so capable and 'in charge' and no b.s. But those are things that many people often imagine are "for (big) boys" - as this excerpt from an interesting article in Slate shows:

Why this disconnect between the performance and recognition of female leaders? Duflo and Topalova are engaged in further research to try to figure this out. They may wish to consult with Heidi Roizen, a hard-charging Silicon Valley venture capitalist and the subject of a Harvard Business School case study on business networking. How was Ms. Roizen perceived by students who read of her assertive style in the case? It depends whether she was presented as a man or as a woman. In an experiment on gender perceptions, psychologists Cameron Anderson and Francis Flynn gave one group of MBA students the original Heidi Roizen case for later in-class discussion, while the other half received a copy that was identical in every way, except that "Heidi" became "Howard." In a study currently under review, Anderson and Flynn report that while both Howard and Heidi were rated as equally competent (they were the same person, after all), students described the female version of the character as overly aggressive, and were much less likely to want to work with or hire her. So the decisive, assertive traits that are often valued in leaders are received very differently when observed in women than when seen in men. Howard was a go-getter. Heidi was unlikably power-hungry.

link: http://www.slate.com/id/2178643

[Kellie]

I personally would have liked the book for boys better than the book for girls. I was never much into "girl" things growing up.

I think a dangerous and daring book for kids would be much better!

[Jessica]

Tertia,
This is totally random, but how do you get involved in doing these book reviews? I'm such a book nut I would love to do it!!

[JuliaKB]

I reviewed it too, and had very mixed feelings. It is clearly a rushed job, and there are bad mistakes in it. My daughter, though, wanted to know why this was a book for girls? Maybe boys would like things in it too. I was happy with that.

[Nevada Lee]

Argh Andrea (and Tertia for that matter!)

Women dont get everything (nice try though!)

As far as I can tell most of our worlds leaders are men?

Ever spend any time reading up on the sex trade that happens, oh in dozens of countries all over the world? Girls have NOT made much headway into not being treated ultimately as the sexual toys of men.

Apparently, the idea that mothers would like their female children to know how to make knots is pretty evil. After all, they have Bratz Dolls! And those are SO much better than legos. Why create buildings, and sculptures, and spaceships, when you can fantasize about having silicone lips and huge boobs?

The politics of sex are no joke. Men DO get the shaft too, I'm not saying they don't. It's criminal that they can't dress up as fairies and paint their nails if they choose. ANd I'm not being sarcastic. It DOES suck. But it doesn't suck as much as female circ (and I'm NOT pro-male circ, which is also barbaric, though it doesn't prevent orgasm so I don't consider it AS barbaric if we are using a measuring stick). It doesn't suck as much as 10 years olds being sold as prositutes so their families can eat. It doesn't even suck as much the prevalence of sexual violence towards women, and plain-old regular violence which is considered acceptable in large parts of the world.

Everyone is all too keen to talk about the occasional woman who lies about being raped, or sends her children off a cliff in a PPD rage, or whatever. But most violence in this world is committed by men. And the particular type of violence used towards women is used to *control* them.

Sorry Andrea, the world isn't aimed to vilify men and raise women up. It just isn't.

And I'm sorry, but writing the Dangerous Book for Boys is hardly some sort of rebellious act. It was perfectly acceptable to ignore women and girls (in books, films and all media) in developed countries as well until a few decades ago. I hardly think the fact that the media and mainstream has to pretend to respect women since the 1970s, means we are all in some sort of PC frenzy.

And whether or not the Daring Book for Girls was planned in advance OR a rush job, it was made NOT because women got pissed, it was made because there was MONEY to be made. MONEY, pure and simple. Don't get me wrong, wouldn't it be wonderful if us nasty, horrible feminists could just yell about stuff and have it taken care of months later. Doesn't happen, but thanks for the credit.

[Barbara]

What both amuses me and pisses me off at the same time is when people critique a book they haven't even read. Love it/hate it/feel utterly indifferent, but know what the hell you are talking about first.

And no, the publishing plan was NOT always for two books. Daring came out in response to Dangerous.

[Sakoro]

First of all, it seems like British and commonwealth countries separate boys and girls more often than in the United States and nobody really raises an eyebrow about it. For example, all boys and all girls schools are much more common over there as well as magazines/ comic books targeted to boys or girls. However, the curriculum of the boys/girls schools is pretty much the same and the boys/girls magazines and comic books are pretty similar as well so I and most other people don't perceive them as sexist. The original authors of the boys book were British, so I think that's the place where they were coming from.

The British started the scouting movement and today in the United States we have the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts as separate organizations. I don't think there's any serious movement to get the two to merge (a least I haven't heard about it.) The two scouting organizations do a lot of similar activities (hiking, building campfires, community service) but there's an extra bonding experience when you're with peers of the same gender.

For adults, the magazine market in United States has separate men's and women's titles and nobody makes a big fuss about it. My boyfriend likes to read GQ and I like to read Oprah magazine. When we're on a long plane ride together, we'll switch magazines halfway. There's some stuff in GQ that I don't care about (men's suits/ cars) but I still find plenty to interest me. And although my boyfriend skips the articles on menopause and chick lit, he finds plenty of articles in Oprah Magazine to keep him occupied.

Sometimes you just want to hang out with women, even if you're not doing a particularly girly thing. Sometimes you want to read books or magazines targeted to your gender. It doesn't mean anybody is trying to deprive the opposite gender of something similar.

[Andrea]

Sakoro,

You handled that with much more care than I did. Blame it on my fierce Irish temper! :) I had to smile, too, because my husband and I do the same thing while on flights. However, he's typically reading Scientific American while I'm peering through one of my Journals of Clinical Psychology.

What I was getting at was not that we live in a female dominated world (because we don't), but that we have become overly sensitive when it comes to gender. Plenty of countries have female leaders - great leaders at that - America has just not stepped into some of those roles yet. And I do agree that the US is more sensitive than other nations; even my Canadian family has said that we exaggerate the sexist problems of the western world. Key word: western world.

It seems slightly overkill to take a conversation about a book aimed towards little boys having fun and turn it into stories of child rape/sex slaves in developing nations. Obviously there are problems with targeting young girls in our society - I have two aunts, one grandmother and my mom has a foster daughter who were all sexually abused as children - but I think that making a "beige" world of "for kids" or, even worse, deciding that because some bad things happen in this world that it's "bad" for things to be gender-influenced is wrong.

Also, I in no way believe women should be restricted to homemaking and mothering (I am more educated than my husband, who does the dishes and laundry far more than I do), but again, I just can't believe that little kitchens and other such toys are degrading and restricting girls to "female-only" occupations. It's amazing, because hundreds of studies have found that although some of gender is, indeed, influenced, much of it is not. Many mothers have said that their daughters naturally gravitate towards certain, more traditional roles. We are made up differently, so why is that such a surprise? Women do have - on average - more of a nurturing attitude; it is found in most cultures, and really should be celebrated.

No, don't limit women. I don't mean that at all. If that were true, I'd have to throw three degrees and really my entire lifestyle right out the window. I am merely saying that turning a boy's book into a feminist argument is over the top. It has nothing to do with the horrible things committed against some women - things that should not happen and should be fought against. It's a book to celebrate being a boy.

I had a kitchen set when I was little. I also had a toy box full of Barbies and frilly, pink dresses. A little boy I grew up with was into 100% completely traditional boy toys. We weren't prevented from playing with the other's things - in our case, we just weren't interested. Nonetheless, I ended up playing softball for ten years, took Computer Aided Drafting and Design in high school and pursued a career in the sciences.

I think the key is not in telling girls they can't do boy things, but to sometimes accept it's okay for them to do other things. If my daughter really wanted the Dangerous book, I'd buy it for her - no questions asked. But I'm also going to teach her to grow up with the understanding that boys and girls are equal, and she can do whatever she puts her mind to, but that sometimes it's okay to let boys do things alone, just as it is for girls.

Sorry for the long post, Tertia, but I didn't want to end on a sour note. I hope this is a little clearer than my last post.

[Sakoro]

Andrea,

Your second post clarifies a lot from your first post. I wasn't angry at all when I saw this one on the bookshelves, I just thought yep, here's the companion sequel. I'm kind of surprised that you would have that reaction. I haven't read the boys one but I would imagine many of the activities are pretty similar. Just like GQ and Oprah magazine might have articles on similar topics but approach it from different angles or have a slightly different tone due to the different audience.

Most of the activities in these books appear to be group activities or at least something that you would do with one other kid. The main point of these books being to get kids interacting with each other and away from sitting solitary staring at a screen. And sometimes it's nice to do these activities with a kid of the same gender as you. There's a certain comfort level there particularly as you hit the tween and teen years and you don't want to look stupid in front of the opposite gender. Although I'm sure some girls will want to include their little brothers or male friends in some of the activities and the book has no prohibition on that.

I have many male friends and work with men all day, but I do enjoy going to my all-female book club once a month. Similarly, my boyfriend loves women and enjoys their company but sometimes he just wants to shoot pool with his guy-friends. And I don't begrudge him that. Sometimes it's healthy to spend time with your girlfriends.

[L.]

ms and Nevada Lee said much of what I wanted to. If we had a Dangerous Book for Kids I would have been thrilled. But I really hate the concept that any of the things in the "for boys" book are NOT for girls. And that's what the title says to me. Shoot, although the "for girls" book seems like a poor cousin to "for boys," I just as much think boys should get to do the girl stuff.

We spend all our lives receiving spoken and unsaid messages about what, as males/females/trans/whatever you like, we should and should not do. Why on earth would we want to add to that? It isn't beige to open up our roles, it's beautiful.

[Orange]

Andrea, Andrea. You say "Many mothers have said that their daughters naturally gravitate towards certain, more traditional roles." These girls are not growing up in a vacuum! They're getting the message—from parents, from classmates, from toys, from TV, from books, from everything—that women and girls are supposed to take care of people and homes. This is not "natural gravitation"—it's pushed by the society around them, by the almost constant reinforcement that woman = nurture. I know plenty of women who have no interest in having children, but even at age 30, they may be told, "Oh, you'll want children in a few years. You'll see." Um, no. It's not a deterministic thing.

Andrea, you say the Dangerous book is about celebrating being a boy. Does it teach boys how to press flowers? How to make friendship bracelets? (These are both in the Daring Book for Girls.) No? Then it's celebrating traditional gender identity and not encouraging them to branch out. Instead, they learn how to hunt and cook a rabbit—though I don't know any young boys who would be keen to master that.

[The Dad Diaries]

Any more books people can recommend for a little girl? Please email me if you get the time or leave me a comment on my Blog. I only have boy books that i kept.

[Ewokmama]

I just wanted to mention that there are actually several books of this type already out there on the market. I was just at the book store this past weekend and they had a whole display up. This is nothing new (at least here in the US).

[Dina]

I'm with you in principle, Tertia. I have only girls and still it bugs me how, in most kids' films, the girls are portrayed as smart and capable and the boys are cowardly, inept bumblers. I'm all for Girl Power, but not to the point of the dumbing down of boys.

[Emily bb]

Ok let me just say this....

WHATS THE BIG DEAL PEOPLE????!!!!!

i'm a 15 year old girl and ive been reading through these comments and i just think, why r u getting so scruffled about this?
My friend has the daring book for girls and ive thumbed through it and instantly wanted one of my own. these books aren't separating the world into boy things and girl things, its just grouping things into what girls might find more interesting and what guys might find more interesting. i mean lets face it, whats the ratio of guys to girls interested in making friendship braclets or playing double dutch??
sure their are some things in there boys would like and same goes for the dangerous book for boys book but really, isnt this just the same hype that went down with 'fairy' penguins and baabaa 'black' sheep??
how many of us were frustrated that they changed the words of nursury rhyme that we had all learned so well? i mean im only 15 but i SERIOUSLY cant see the connection between cute little penguines and people who happen to like fellow members of their own sex!
well its the same thing here. these books are just a little bit of fun for kids (and 15+ yr olds). it's not like theyre saying "THIS IS WHAT GIRLS MUST LIKE AND THIS IS WHAT BOYS MUST LIKE!" it just dumbfounds me how petty these arguaments are! i feel like a mother trying to stop her kids from fighting about who's better: boys or girls! The next thing you know, we'll not be allowed to say boys & girls becaue of the order of words! sound far-fetched? well when you were little did you ever suspect the harmless baabaa could be seen as racist??

chances are no.

so seriously guys,
chill.
just thumb through and enjoy the book.