The Double-Daring Book for Girls,   ISBN:B002SB8P38

Customer Rating: 

How can you not like a book that tells you how to dye your hair with Kool-Aid, how to make a lava lamp, how to perform a Japanese Tea Ceremony, what the meaning of courage is, how to catch a fish, how to run a magazine, how to be a private eye, how to become President of the United States, all about the Underground Railroad, how to dance the Cotton-Eyed Joe, how to shoot pool, how to say no (and how to say yes), and -- for pete's sake -- how to run away and join the circus. And that's less than 10% of the topics in the book. The information in here is terribly important, it is positively invaluable lore and instruction.

I defy anyone to pick up this book and tell me that they made it through reading the Table of Contents without smiling, reminiscing, and also being intrigued. It's a seemingly random collection of really neat stuff that you find you are thrilled someone had the time, energy and brains to actually document. It's the stuff that's told around the campfires, discussed over dinner tables, and taught over sidewalk chalk in the driveway.

Get it for your daughter, get it for your niece, or get it for yourself. It makes a wonderful addition to any girl's book collection, and when you give it was a gift, you will know that you've struck gold.

Customer Rating: 

It's summer, and we're getting creative here at our house - we are thoroughly enjoying the latest and greatest by Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, The Double-Daring Book for Girls. It's perfect for my daughter - and her friends...chock full of fun, no-holds-barred ideas and opportunities for girls to explore. I highly recommend it for every family...

The book is ideal for a hot, summer day to learn about how to start a mother-daughter book club, create paper beads, play dominoes, or even...how to run away and join the circus!!! We've already started planning out our summer evenings and weekends to include many of the amazing activities in this incredible book....

Here's our thrown down challenge

Let's all highlight our hair with Kool-Aid!! (yes, you are reading this correctly, my friend...pull out those 25 cent packages and get colorful!!!) Get silly and creative with your special girl - it's a fun time sharing a wickedly outrageous beauty makeover without a big commitment. We can't wait to tell our friends, "Does she, or doesn't she? Only Mr. Kool-Aid knows for sure!"

My daughter I are headed to the pantry to pick out our flavors...ugh, colors....to jazz out our "do"...what color are you going to try?

Customer Rating: 

This book is IMO all about empowering girls. I would be an awesome book to read with an important girl in your life, chapter by chapter, exploring all the activities as you go. Both of you would learn a great deal. It would be a perfect addition for the homeschool family, no doubt about it! And of course you can do virtually everything in it with boys too.

Customer Rating: 

Honestly, I want to hand this book to every girl I know, and the boys as well (pink typeface and Girl label be damned, this book is a powder keg of information and ideas for any kid). I am pleased that it covers so many topics I want my kids to know well, e.g., batik techniques and history (p.99), commonly confused words like imply and infer (p. 141), and the specifics of quality private eye work (p. 177).

What I truly appreciate, and what makes the Daring books transcend the How To label, is the activities' historical and often rebellious context. Why should our kids want to know how to waltz (p. 78)? How about because it was considered scandalous -- the dancing partners touched! And vulgar, forbidden -- it was easy to learn and didn't require a dance master!

Mostly, I am dazzled by the amount of good, hard, enticingly written information amassed in the Double Daring book. I want kids to know everything in it. I want them all to know exactly who Eleanor of Aquitaine was, and how startling her long, accomplished, independent life was compared to most women of her era. I want them to know the fundamentals of rhetoric, how to make a raft, the story of Ada Lovelace, how to join the circus, how to say thank you in scores of languages, how to make snowglobes, how to conduct an orchestra, and how to make rope ladders.

The Double Daring book is buoyed by positivity, and focuses on cultivating competence, independence, willingness to experiment, and open-ended fun. It provides multiple short biographies of women whose lives exemplified these attitudes. These role models are an antidote to heavily-marketed (and in some cases marketing-originated) books like The Clique series, which my daughter and her friends crave, and in which junior high-aged girls live lives of insecurity, negativity, and cruelty, while obsessing about label-spangled fashion, unrealistic body images, and social machinations. Ptui.

If you want your girls to value knowledge and abilities like they do store-bought items, get them The Double Daring Book for Girls. I truly believe it has the power to inspire and edify any child with a curious mind, while simultaneously countering media-induced materialism. It is a treasure.

Customer Rating: 

I brought this with me to a friend's house when we were doing a moms night out and all of us laughed as we went through the whole book, reminiscing over the things we used to do and some of the things we haven't done but wanted to do. It's definitely a fun book for girls, but also for the moms. [...]