"The book," she says, "revels in retro, conjuring up a pre-computer, pre-videogame idyll of hunting, skipping stones, making paper airplanes and bows and arrows, and stories of battlefield heroics." The authors, Conn and Hal Iggulden, expect boys to be gentlemen. The columnist marvels that "it endorses good manners, cleanliness and knowledge of Shakespeare, Latin phrases and history."

The book is being treated as something of a political manifesto--a repudiation of the idea that boys and girls are basically alike.

Did I ever want to be a boy? Sort of, a little bit. Boys had freedom, could ride their bikes two miles up to Sandy Creek, wade around in the water, and fish with homemade poles and safety-pin hooks. I had to stay home and bake brownies. Later at 16 when I started dating, boys didn't have curfews, but I had to be home by 9 p.m. on a school night or by 10:30 p.m. on Friday or Saturday night.

I remember around the age of ten, because I had a small frame, being able to slide into my six-year-old brother's jeans. Somehow, it was more fun to wear his fly-front denims instead of my boringly-beige elastic-waist pants. It was easier to climb trees, and I could run faster without extra fabric from a dress or loose pants flapping around my legs. I wasn't a girly-girl, so I made it my business to teach him how to be a boy. With lots of practice, he learned how to throw a softball over the garage roof, how to build wooden Lincoln Log bunkhouses (for our plastic ranch set--brown barn, white fences, ranch equipment including a buckboard, an assortment of cattle and horses, and "people" in various poses), how to catch frogs in Duffy-Mott's marsh behind our house, how to start carpenter ant farms in Mason jars, and how to climb up on the kitchen countertop and balance on tiptoe to reach the hidden stash of matches, several of which we used to start campfires for our ranch people.

Did I really want to be a boy? I don't think so. When you got right down to it, being a male looked like hard work.

In November HarperCollins will be coming out with The Daring Book for Girls.

Last Edited on 24-Jun-2007 6:53 PM

By the time I had brothers, toys on that scale were way beyond our family budget.

When I was about 40, my husband gave me a little electric train for Christmas.

If I had youngsters now, I would definitely be giving them subversive books like those, daring them to test their prowess against real trees and rivers and rocks and dirt instead of diving into the rabbit hole of video games with their almost pathologically addictive and psychologically isolating pseudo-reality.

Last Edited on 25-Jun-2007 12:10 AM

Aaaaaaaaah, SapphireMoon. You remind me of visits to my favorite cousin Gerald, the only child of my mother's only sister. The family of three maintained my grandfather's Idaho farm. We visited only every few years, since it took all of six days to drive on two-lane highways from where we lived in North Carolina. I always looked forward to that picturesque journey and to the dream-come-true destination---dream-come-true because Gerald was about my age, had an elaborate HO-gauge train set that took up most of his (large) bedroom, had his own horse, and had (let me take a breath!) his very own BB gun!!!

He taught me how to properly saddle a horse. (Yes, you can screw that up so the saddle isn't cinched tightly enough and slips to the horse's side--you hope before you are astride.) Early in the mornings, we would ride double out into the scrub to flush out and shoot jack rabbits that dined on his father's crops. (Gerald did the shooting. After all, I was "only a girl".) After lunch, in the cool of his bedroom (curtains drawn and shades pulled), we played with the train set or lay on his big bed and read mountains of comics.

Maybe being a boy wouldn't be too difficult.

Last Edited on 29-Jun-2007 7:22 PM

And you made me think of cousins (hordes) and farms (Vermont) and horses, brooks, cows, barns, haylofts, bales of straw, corn rows, berry vines, tire swings, newborn kittens, milking, fresh tomatoes, summer nights on the roof, covered bridges, village churches, wagons, cool moist grass.

My boy cousins (four of them) in Vermont had a whole room in their big old house that was almost solid comic books, at least waist deep, mostly Walt Disney, with noplace much to sit except on or amongst the comic books. You could read through piles for days and days and days. It was a glorious haven of childhood fantasy escapism. You just made me think of that. What a memory!

Anne Bach, of the Center for Story and Symbol, says in directing her writing exercises: "Walk around in your life and pick up the treasures." Once you start to do this, once you stop and notice one or two glistening gems along the path, you find, as Little Red Riding Hood did when she started picking flowers, that each one leads you to the next and the next a little further on, and suddenly you've gathered more than you can carry.

I thank you, too, coley, for the nice compliment.

Last Edited on 25-Jun-2007 11:45 PM