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1. Instapundit » Blog Archive » ROGER KIMBALL ON The Dangerous Book for Boys. I guess Roger’s “hyper-masculine,” too. The bow-tie …:

[...] KIMBALL ON The Dangerous Book for Boys. I guess Roger’s “hyper-masculine,” too. The bow-tie should have been a tipoff . . [...]

Dec 12, 2008 - 8:19 am 2. Paul:

I’m with James!

Sixty or so years ago, I decided to show off during recess in the schoolyard (of the Francis Scott Key Elementary School, Philadelphia) by climbing a drainpipe that ran alongside the windows of the school office. There, Mr. Sharlip, the principal — and a nasty disciplinarian (aqccording to the bad boys who were sent down to him)– reigned. Reigned, however, alongside the most lovable young Miss Hopf, the school secretary. My plan was to report, viva voice while up on the drainpipe, on goings-on inside the office, impressing especially the girls in my class

I slipped and fell, perhaps fifteen feet, to the schoolyard pavement, but breaking my fall by grabbing the pipe as I slid. Lying there, I didn’t feel quite right, and on the return of breathing, I noticed a big pain in the right shoulder. In fact I had fractured my collarbone.

I was, eventually, sent home in with the school custodian, in his car, to my hysterical mother, and thence to the local hospital (Mt.Sinai!).

My terror was, for a week, that they (anybody in authority) would find out what I had been doing on that drainpipe and why. That terror was erased forever on the first day of my return to the Key School. Mr. Sharlip had me stand up in the morning’s assembly to be praised by him as a “good, brave boy,” burdened with wearing a back/ shoulder brace for a full month, but returning to school nevertheless as a “good Key citizen.” Ever since I have loved and honored the poem that begins, “Oh say, can you see — by the dawn’s early light/ What so proudly we hailed…”

Dec 12, 2008 - 9:02 am 3. Steve:

As a liberal who reads this blog regularly (I can for William Logan and stayed for Roger Kimball), I wanted to add that this book is terrific. I have two sons and two daughters (for whom a knock-off book was created), and it’s true that the opportunities for danger are difficult to come by these days. I want my kids marching through the woods, climbing across logs only to fall into creeks, and learning (in short) how to become independent adults. As far as “baby woman”, that’s roughly the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read. My feminist wife would cringe at the thought of girl-dom being taken away: as far as I’m concerned over-insullation is neglect. Thanks for bringing this book back to the attention of your readers.

Dec 12, 2008 - 9:29 am 4. kevIN:

I’m only 38 but my boyhood feels positively Huck Finn compared to today. And I grew up in the suburbs!

Campfires and camping in my own backyard, Cran apple fights (including my brother’s deadly wrist rockets), fireworks, stilts, dirt clod fights, skateboard and bike racing (no helmets either!), BB guns and whatnot.

We roamed the neighborhoods in large packs, unseen by our parents for hours on end. We came home to report in for supper and then back to mess around until it was to dark to go on.

Dec 12, 2008 - 9:36 am 5. KBL in ABQ:

Perhaps there is hope for Western Civilization. Perhaps once again boys can be boys and girls can be girls who grow up to be strong men and nurturing women, respectively. After all, the work of children is play, and how they play will determine what kind of men and women they become.
As I read the review, I was delighted to see a pocket knife and magnifying glass recognized as essential tools for any adventurous boy, just as I was delighted by the awakened memories of “harvesting” my first rabbit and roasting it on an open fire in the hills of northern New Mexico. Thank God my parents let me be a real boy.
Can’t wait to read the book. Thanks for bringing it to my attention,Roger.

Dec 12, 2008 - 9:39 am 6. MLEH:

When I discovered this marvelous book, I ordered copies for my husband, both my sons and both my sons-in-law. It gave me hope for my grandsons. Alas, the ‘companion’, The Daring Book for Girls, is a pale and miserable shadow by comparison.

Dec 12, 2008 - 10:11 am 7. David Gillies:

Like kevIN, I’m only 38, but I also had a childhood that would be largely circumscribed by tort lawyers today. Playing rugby in the snow with no padding, endless afternoons roaming around farms and woods with air rifles, .22s and .410s, climbing (and falling out of) trees, shooting rabbits in the dead of night, making blow guns, burning things or making them explode with whatever came to hand (emptying the powder out of 12 bore cartridges was a favourite, as was DIY napalm), building camps in the wood and leading razzias against enemy gangs, the list goes on. And yes, I have a few scars to show for it, but nothing worse. We might have seemed like tearaways, but there was no malice and a strict sense of boundaries. I daresay our parents’ hair would have stood on end had they known about some of our antics, but for the most part they turned a blandly Nelsonian eye.

There seems to be a faultline around the mid ’80s. I could read things like Swallows and Amazons or The Otterbury Incident and identify with the characters, even though they are set further before my childhood than my childhood is to the present day. For children today reading these books must be like trying to read a foreign language.

Dec 12, 2008 - 10:22 am 8. Smartsquatch:

I bought this book for my 8-year-old boy last year, and being 49 myself, compare the world of my youth with that of his.

We both live in arboreal southern suburbs with undeveloped woods and creeks and lakes nearby to explore. He loves nature, yet the pull of computers and cable TV and video games is a spring tide which we must resist.

While I played Little league for 9 weeks in the Spring, he plays soccer for Fall, winter, and Spring seasons.

While I played table-top hockey and “electric football,”—totally anti-climatic—he plays Madden football on the Wii.

While I played with cap guns and BB guns, he plays with Nerf guns.

While I craved my first knife (a sign of manhood like no other), he is nonplussed at the idea. (Maybe he is just too young yet? I can’t remember if it was at 8 or 10 that my yearning to “grow up” was greater.)

Is he more wussified than I was? Has the feminizaton of our culture gotten him?

His favorite game is to wrestle and fight me, which we do with great gusto. And his competitiveness and assertiveness on the soccer field seems to be equal to my own.

I know that he is smart—he won the school science fair—with math and science aptitude, yet he also possesses the ability to play the piano, lead a school play, and sing solos in the church choir.

In the end, though, I feel that he does need the permission to be more “dangerous,” and that is the great value of this book.

Dec 12, 2008 - 11:05 am 9. RockThrowingPeasant:

I bought the book some time ago and really enjoy it (sons age 7 and 6). I think boys today are more than interested in things if they get decent exposure to it. At a family reunion, I showed kids how to make rope, pinwheels, and shoot a beebee gun. The shooting was the biggest hit, as we stacked empty beer cans at a distance and fired away.

Now, I’m not a “super dad” or anything, but just joining Scouts with your sons cna show them new things. They may not go the whole way through, but it gives them exposure to all sorts of things you could never arrange on your own.

We either make time to raise our boys to be men or they will be, well, not “men.” Buying the book doesn’t do it automatically. Sending the boy to Scouts doesn’t do it. Committing to giving up “me time,” plunking down $75 for a beebee gun and 6,000 pellets, and making a trip with a six pack of soda does more good for a boy than any organized activity.

I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the dad role (in the sense that my old man was a hands off dad, not a bad one, just a “do it yourself” dad), but I don’t regret it. Not to stifle or chase the boys with pillows, lest they stumble and need a soft landing, but to show them how to do things and to watch them make mistakes and learn.

In short, just because you were raised with a good dad doesn’t mean you can’t try to be a better one.

Dec 12, 2008 - 1:16 pm 10. Chris Foleen:

I have two words for you all: Boy Scouts.
I spent 7 years in as a Scout in the ’60s, and I have served as an adult leader for the last 17 years. Everything in this book (which I own and love) is promoted and exceeded by a good troop. Find one for your son (or co-ed Venturing crew for young women 14+) and encourage them to join with a friend.

Dec 12, 2008 - 1:55 pm 11. Robert:

My husband and I got this book for our two sons (now eleven and seven). Not sure how much of an impact it’s having/will have, but they’re definitely boyistic boys, enthusiastic about cars, robots and rocketships.

My personal favorite bit in the book is the short section on dealing with girls.

Minor digression: I’ve long felt that part of the lag in science/technology education in this country lately is the fact that the smells and bangs have been taken out of it. Let elementary school kids make fizzy messes with reasonably safe chemicals, let them play with Wimshurst generator, have them graduate to model rocketry in middle school – making it all theory and no fun is just putting Dolores Umbridge in charge of Defense against the Dark Arts.

Dec 12, 2008 - 3:06 pm 12. Roy M:

‘And speaking of “boys,” have you noticed how unprogressive the word sounds in today’s English? ‘

No. Can’t say I have noticed. “Boys” No, nothing. And I think PC has, on the whole, been a positive thing (argue about that another time). A book for children is published of which you approve and you still manage to hang all kinds of bad things on it. You conservatives and your to-hell-in-handbasket fixation!

It is a bit funny the way the article is written to sound like 2007 was a golden age during which books like “the Dangerous Book for Boys” could be published. But todays world would never allow it.

I also noticed that somethig changed in the eighties. Like others Kevin and David I spent my childhood away from adults at every opportunity, playing in woods cycling, camping out,just being with the gang. Oh the home made crossbow, I’d forgotten about that, just brilliant.

On the other hand there was the petty crime and vandalism, two stays in hospital before the age of 10: big fall from tree, and a road accident, and being molested by a couple of old pervs in the woods (hey, it was the ’70s). So you know, some good some bad came out of our freedom.

And Kerry Potter got killed.

So like I say. Some good and some bad.

Sure, buy the book, take you boys to scouts and teach them to be confident men AND keep them safe as best we can.

Dec 12, 2008 - 4:26 pm 13. vb:

I bought books for several boys I know (and for their fathers), but had a hard time parting with them even though I am a way too old, somewhat wimpish female. The book really captures the sp.irit of boyhood that I love to see even in grown men. The authors also did a good job injecting history and poetry into the realm of boyhood.

It’s nice to browse through the Amazon customer reviews and read how many boys just love the book. All is not lost.

Dec 12, 2008 - 4:47 pm 14. Brendan:

I was a bit dissapoointed by the book, tell you the truth. It was charming, but seemed pretty low-powered given the ruckus made over it: that in turn would seem to be because of the wussification of boys by excessive nannystate “social products” being foisted onto the long suffering citizens of the UK (nd increasingly the US). There is also institutionalized feminization, which I agree is child abuse and yet another form of stalininst lysenoism, where the political
program will be followed and damn the facts.

As a kid, I didn’t get the impression that I and my friends were all that radical. I built my first rocket from scratch at eight, and my first 4″ whistling chrysanthemum shell at fourteen. Everybody was building rockets, and sure enough, a couple of them got a bo-bo. I can assure you one of them didn’t make it into Julliard, but so what.

Other kids were happy to join in, take lessons, and some are still science freaks, despite storied sports or academic success as kids. My coach caught me with a big rocket stashed in my locker: instead of calling homeland security, he invited me to launch it on the football field, where it promptly blew up to the cheers of the jocks.
Facinating chemicals for fascinating experiments were available, or could be ordered at the drugstore with a parent along. I delighted my classmates by filling my lungs with pure oxygen, then blowing it through a cigarette to produce an angry foot-long flame as the cigarette was suddenly consummed…this in the seventh and eighth grade, with the thanks of my teachers for the demonstration.
The hundreds of feet of the internal spillway inside a huge nearby
dam (illuminated with road flares) was a favorite skateboard run.

The discovery that a few chips of dry ice could explode a screw-capped lubricant can
or a taped prince albert can came along with the startled laughter of passersby. Adults might censor, or tell us that yes kid, you’ll put you eye out, but back then kids weren’t being kicked out of school for drawing just a picture of a bullet, because “we have a zero tolerance policy”, drug peddling, overcharged self-promoting social workers (largely women, BTW) weren’t peddling ADD drugs and cops anxious to justify themselves didn’t arrest kids for filling a clothes bag with oven gas and let it float into the night sky with a time fuse.

Youthful vigor was often discouraged but not treated as some sort of state crime.
Today two boys doing the pop-bottle and
dry ice trick were charged by a zealoty
assistant district attorney with
“terrorism”:other cops comb Utube films to try and identify young fellows doing interesting things with matches, household chemicals and etc. Opportunistic parents (the ones that also long for a car accident), and their shameless tort lawyers have made chemistry sets extinct (which were already pretty damn tame fifty years ago). In California it is against the law to sell more than $100 worth of chemistry glassware, for chris sakes.
So the days of elders recognizing the importance of encouraging childhood interests, even with associated risks, are gone. Interestingly, so is the technologic superiority of the typical American kid and that is coming home to roost, as our tough
scientific courses (which are hard work) contain mostly BRIC students, while our graduate schools of basketweaving, thumbsucking and gender and race whining, business and law courses are crammed with people with legendary aversion to technology,as in they can’t use a car jack.

Dec 12, 2008 - 5:00 pm 15. Mike Miller:

I agree that scout is one of the few avenues left for classic adventure for boys. I used DBFB as a source for ideas for my youngest sons den and the boys enjoyed it very much. That and a lesson on how to make a sling shot and a David and Goliath style sling were the most popular activities that year.

Dec 12, 2008 - 5:45 pm 16. Dave Hardy:

First .22 at age 8, first centerfire rifle at 16, reloading for it same year. Mixed homemade gunpowder at 10, first homemade rockets at 14. In high school a close friend and I became president and VP of the science club, which gave us access to the lab after school. They may never have figured where all the nitric acid was going to. We only dabbled with high explosive now and then. Today he’s an MD and I’m a JD.

Dec 12, 2008 - 6:01 pm 17. DavidN:

I worked in a bookstore at the time The Dangerous Book for Boys was released. It was the sense of everyone in the book business that I talked to that it was a very well-conceived book. There are a number of other books of a similar nature on the shelf available. One of my favorites was called “Backyard Ballistics”. It includes instructions on making such things as potato cannons and water rockets. But back to the Igguldon brothers’ book.

Books for children are marketed unusually. It’s typical that you market the book to the end-user, but in the case of childrens’ books, that’s not the case. You market to the *parents*, or perhaps grandparents. That’s where The Dangerous Book for Boys was so brilliant. It included a number of things that were sure to attract nostalgic memories from the prospective buyer, who is looking to purchase one of these books for their sons or grandsons. The retro cover reminds older adults, especially males, of their own childhoods, and the positive parts of that experience. The whole thing was brilliantly packaged and marketed, and it sold like hotcakes.

Interestingly, the Daring Book for Girls, which was designed to be a pretty close to complete counterpart, did nowhere near as well in sales. I don’t have any figures, but anecdotally, the book didn’t move anywhere near as well, didn’t generate the buzz, and just didn’t do as much. Just the other day I was in my local Borders. They had to copies of the Dangerous Book for Boys on the wall behind the register, and only one copy of The Daring Book for Girls. You might think that means they had sold all of the latter, but the more likely answer is that they ordered fewer of them in the first place.

And as a side-note, there was a wonderful parody of The Dangerous Book for Boys this last Christmas season. It’s called The Dangerous Book for Dogs. Instead of synopses of Napoleon’s battles, it includes synopses of legendary dog battles with man (complete with maps) including one with a Mailman, and another with a patch of light on the kitchen counter. It has short bios of various famous dogs in history, including the dogs who trained Dr. Pavlov to give them treats whenever they salivated after hearing the bells in the laboratory. While the book is smaller, the cover looks very similar to the book it’s parodying, and it’s quite fun.

Dec 12, 2008 - 7:02 pm 18. The Dangerous Book for Boys:

[...] not going to belabor this point too much, and several other writers (Roger Kimball for one), have written about the feminization of boys in today’s society (which I think [...]

Dec 12, 2008 - 7:04 pm 19. Lefroy:

I seem to recall that in the English edition there are parts devoted to subjects like national heroes, the kings and queens of England and so on. I assume there are equivalent bits in the American edition. Delicious!! Wonderful! Together with knives, skinning rabbits and climbing trees, it must send the chattering classes into ORBIT!

Dec 12, 2008 - 7:04 pm 20. Bleepless:

Banned in Seattle public schools: baseballs, footballs, baseball bats, seesaws. Thanks a lot, Trial Lawyers’ Association.

Dec 12, 2008 - 8:28 pm 21. Roy M:

Baseball bats and balls banned in schools? Show me.

Metal bats maybe.

Dec 13, 2008 - 7:27 am 22. Horace Wells:

I’m sure someone else could write a book about the hyper masculinization of society, with Xtreme sports, martial arts studios on every block, lots of violence in our schools, graphic violence in the media and tattoed head hunter looking wretches everywhere. Face it, it’s a big world and for every Emo wannabee there is some gangsta wannabe. No insight here as usual from Roger, just more of the right’s usual fretting over gays and peaceniks.

Dec 14, 2008 - 8:05 pm 23. Tom G.:

Hehe..at the risk of being excoriated, any one who calls their brand new precious gift a “baby woman” are retards.

Dec 14, 2008 - 8:18 pm 24. Pojkaktigheten och dess förlorade konstarter « Kaffepaus:

[...] Från Roger Kimball. [...]

Dec 15, 2008 - 7:31 am 25. Lefroy:

And “Horace Wells” makes my point. Kimball is without “insight” and given over to “fretting over gays and peaceniks” (I must have missed those articles), but Horace is driven back here, tormented by the existence of points of view other than his own.

Dec 17, 2008 - 2:42 pm

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