Product Description

The Daring Book for Girls is the manual for everything that girls need to know—and that doesn't mean sewing buttonholes! Whether it's female heroes in history, secret note-passing skills, science projects, friendship bracelets, double dutch, cats cradle, the perfect cartwheel or the eternal mystery of what boys are thinking, this book has it all. But it's not just a guide to giggling at sleepovers—although that's included, of course! Whether readers consider themselves tomboys, girly-girls, or a little bit of both, this book is every girl's invitation to adventure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48418 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-18
• Released on: 2007-10-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Kadushin, whose lush voice brought the heroine of Stephenie Meyers's Twilight series to life, does her best to inject some intrigue and mystery into this mile-wide, inch-deep compendium of random facts billed as a manual for everything that girls need to know, a selection from the bestselling book. Alas, the audio version, replete with time lines, 14 variations of how to play tag and sesquipedalian vocabulary words, sorely lacks dynamism. The brief histories of famous women—Joan of Arc, Marie Curie, Salome—make for more engaging listening than material about how to change a tire or administer first aid. Listeners might find themselves wishing for something akin to the screen selection feature on a DVD, so that if they need information on, say, what constitutes a foul in tetherball, they could get to it without having to wade through the section on women who have earned patents for various inventions. Without such an index, the listener is reduced to writing down the information Kadushin relays, which raises the question: isn't this available in book form?
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
This delightful potpourri for ³Œtween² girls offers a variety of topics. There are lessons on games of tag, hopscotch, slumber parties, making stink bombs, performing CPR, and changing a tire. Lively role models abound. In particular, the authors cite Jo March from LITTLE WOMEN, who said she could never be friends with a girl who didn't climb trees or jump fences. Other influential women who are discussed include Joan of Arc, Salome, Cleopatra, Amelia Earhart, Abigail Adams, Florence Nightingale, as well as Civil War and Revolutionary spies. Ilyana Kadushin shows her versatility with a lively delivery that is frequently characterized by a ³big sister² tone. M.T.B. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About the Author

Andrea Buchanan is the mother of a daughter and a son, both of whom are equally daring. Before she was a writer, she was a pianist who once performed a solo concert at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. This is her fifth book.

Miriam Peskowitz is the mother of two girls, including an eight-year-old who climbs trees and leads spy missions in the backyard. She has been a camp counselor, an historian, a blogger, a musician, a professor, and is the author of several books, including The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars.

Customer Reviews

Dull book attempting to cash in on success of a Dangerous one.
I bought this for my niece, and I must say I'm rather disappointed in it. It lacks all of the wit and charm of the Dangerous Book for Boys and seems as though it would appeal to those children who would prefer an rather dull afternoon rather then the adventures promised. It all feels rather tame, at times even feeing like a book parents want their daughters to read in order to tone them down a bit. For example, in the section on slumber parties it suggests laying out ground rules before a game of truth or dare. Because you know what's really daring? Ground rules. And where the Dangerous Book for Boys had a very funny section on girls, the Daring Book for Girls offers up sage advice that boys can make good friends and like to do things.

It smacks of a publisher realising that they have a hit on their hands and therefore deciding to rush out a sequel. With activities such as flower pressing, thank you note writing, and bracelet making, the truly daring girl is better off reading the book for boys.

Reminds Me of What Girls Did When I Was Young
I was intrigued by this book's title after reading The Dangerous Book for Boys which provided me with a fun walk down memory lane. Having read that book made me aware that I didn't only play with boys when I was growing up, I also spent many happy hours playing with boys and girls together. Naturally, in those days playing together usually meant doing what the girls wanted to do. Why? They were bigger, smarter, and tougher than we boys were at that age.

My daughters by comparison grew up in a different age when there was much less mixing of the sexes during play. As a result, my daughters missed out on such favorites from my youth as various kinds of tag, four square, paper airplanes, clubhouses, forts, paddling canoes, math tricks, roller skating, card games, simple gymnastics, and various other schoolyard games . . . especially tetherball . . . ah, tetherball! I wish this book had been available then. I would have given it to them.

You cannot assume anything about today's girls and young women so the book covers traditional female favorites (nice handwriting, pressing flowers, jump rope, softball, using a pencil to put up your hair, slumber party games, cloth-covered books, sleep outs, lemonade stand, handclap games, ghost stories, jacks, friendship bracelets, and paper flowers. For those who don't want to feel like they are limited by being females, there are sections on tool kits, knots, building a campfire, reading tide charts, building a scooter, changing a tire, and becoming a spy. There are also sections that would be of value to any child: Robert's Rules of Order, watercolor painting, finance, negotiating a salary, public speaking, vocabulary, yoga, first aid, periodic table of the elements, and playing basketball.

I found myself having a very good time reading the materials. They are well illustrated and interesting.

I didn't have very many quibbles but they were mostly related to condensing material. For example, How to Whistle with Two Fingers starts with "Make a triangle with your pinkies . . . ." Now how can two fingers make a triangle? Beats me. In lists of princesses, some are noted for having gone through a divorce. Surely, there's something more interesting about those princesses than a failed marriage. As a result, I found about 20 percent of the sections weren't too usable because I either couldn't figure out what they were trying to tell me or they were telling me something that no one needs to know. But after all, I'm just a dumb old boy . . . so maybe those smart young girls today can figure it out. I hope so.

I wished the book would have had a few more sections on adventuresome things to do with friends rather than merely social things. A lot of things my daughters did and loved at camp weren't covered.

On behalf of my mother who always kept lots of scrapbooks, I should note that her interest was at least as strong in princes as it was in princesses. This book lacked in princes but does very well with queens and princesses.

I was surprised to see that the many heroines in the Bible weren't represented here in the history of women sections. Now, there were some adventuresome women!

daringly boring
i agree with the other negative reviewer. this book is trying to milk the success of the dangerous book for boys with content not quite on par with what was in that book. the book for boys had interesting and slightly obscure facts and activities one would enjoy reading about, and not just for little boys but in general for adults as well as kids, its an interesting book to flip through. the book for girls on the other hand had some activities in there that were... more widely known about, or in other words, common sense. examples can be found in the video provided above on this page... like bandana tying? tree swings? what do you need to know about those things other than the fact they exist? to need an instruction manual on how to tie a bandana or paddle a canoe is kind of sad. to compare the girls book to the boys book one would think we patronize our girls (which we do unfortunately but lets hope we grow out of that). i found most of the activities to be hands on and not so much intellectual, which is not completely bad, but the funny thing about 'active' activities is you learn them best by doing them, not so much reading about them. don't get me wrong, the fact that there are more so called 'hands on' activities in the girls book is not what makes it bad, its the fact that those activities are so juvenile and uninteresting compared to the information in the boys book. there were a few interesting things in the book, but overall not worth the time. the only way in which it is as good or maybe better than the book for boys was the recommended reading list at the back. there were a few good books and it was a more extensive list than the boys list (hint hint, go read those books instead of this one).

of course the problem with both of the books is that they attempt to make the information gender specific which just perpetuates stereotypes and closes minds, but short of writing your own book or writing letters there's not much you can do about that other than tell your child its ok to like reading the book with the name of the opposite gender on the cover.

my advice to you, buy the dangerous book for boys and give it to your daughters. or if you are really keen on getting a reference book with the word girls in the title, go with one called: Science Book for Girls and Other Intelligent Beings by Valerie Wyatt. that is a good one that will get them doing something and teaching them at the same time.