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The Dangerous Book for Boys
Conn Iggulden & Hal Iggulden
By
Published: Jan 01, 2007
Category:
Children
The Dangerous Book for Boys
Conn Iggulden & Hal Iggulden
I saw a mother at a playground shouting at her kid, “Don’t run!” The other moms didn’t look shocked — their own kids, coasting on scooters, were wearing helmets. And that’s the level of paranoia about child safety in the city, where children are in no real danger from cars, guns and maniacs. In the ‘burbs, I hear, it’s much worse. Not only must kids suit up in Hazmet gear before they head off to school, but their parents follow them in their cars, eyes peeled for the perv who’s lurking behind the shrubs.
And we wonder why our children sit at the TV or computer, fattening themselves on snacks loaded with high fructose corn syrup.
One of the legacies of 9/11, I believe, is that we have taken fear to ridiculous levels. We’ve built real and metaphorical fortresses around us, and if those walls keep us in, at least they keep the bad guys out. We pay a price: Our kids become wusses. But it’s a price many parents willingly pay. I guess they think if their kid scrapes a knee, the terrorists win.
The Iggulden brothers — Brits with enough years behind them to remember the days when you went out to play and no one expected you home until dark — decided that boys need courage. And they way they believe boys get it is by making knots, building tree houses, mastering the telling of stories of heroes. The old rituals of boyhood, in other words.
Which may explain why “The Dangerous Book for Boys” has taken off. Start with the retro packaging; the turn-of-the-century cover design and thick, faded paper make the book feel like a beautiful object rescued from a time capsule. For fathers who buy it, there’s surely a big nostalgia factor. For women, there’s the hope that their husbands will become more active fathers. But I sense that the underlying driver behind the sales of this book is still fear — if your kid doesn’t learn to tie a knot in his childhood, he may devote his teen years to learning how to roll a joint one-handed.
Which is, pretty much, Conn Iggulden’s theory:
Boys need to learn about risk. If we do away with challenging playgrounds and cancel school trips for fear of being sued, we don’t end up with safer boys — we end up with them walking on train tracks. In the long run, it’s not safe at all to keep our boys in the house with a Playstation. It’s not good for their health or their safety.
You only have to push a boy on a swing to see how much he enjoys the thrill of danger. It’s hard-wired. Remove any opportunity to test his courage, and they’ll find ways to test themselves that will be seriously dangerous for everyone around them.
When you open the book, it is true: Fear falls away, fun returns. Not old-fashioned Boy Scout fun — the kind of good clean fun that only imaginary boys have. Just updated. Modern fun, fun with an edge.
Essential Gear, for instance. Swiss Army Knife and Compass, of course. And also a handkerchief, among other reasons, for “offering one to a girl when she cries.” I can attest that “the greatest paper airplane in the world” is just that — it’s the model I used to make back in the Pleistocene. Did you know there are only 17 basic rules of Soccer? And when was the last time you played table football with coins?
And more. Here, with lovely “old” illustrations, are thumbnail sketches of The Seven Wonders of the World. Here is basic Astronomy. The kinds of dinosaurs. How to understand basic grammar: “It is always ‘between you and me.’ If you hear someone say, ‘between you and I,’ it isn’t a matter of opinion, they’re just wrong.” Famous battles. Types of fish.
Danger? Well, they do teach you how to make a water bomb. But wrapping a package? Skipping stones? Poker? Marbles? Books every boy should read? Pretty tame stuff.
You have to wonder if there were wilder chapters — swinging on a rope, mastering the high dive — that were excised “for legal reasons.” I can easily believe that. Certainly the parents in my neighborhood would never buy a book that encouraged their kids to do something really dangerous.
Ah, I’ve got it. This is the first book in a series: Martha Stewart for boys. Lads and their dads will go through it, shooting some marbles and building a workbench. Then the kid will say, “Aw, shucks, dad, this weren’t dangerous at all!” And right then we’ll discover that there’s a second book on the way, with real knife games and ropes that Marines climb and rushing streams that you have to ford on a rope bridge you make yourself.
But let me not be flip about the absence of heart-pounding thrills. You never know when you might get lost in the woods. And it would be a very good thing indeed, while you’re using your compass to find your way out, if you can tell the story of the Battle of Gettysburg.
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