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| The American Boy's Handy Book: What to Do and How to Do It (Nonpareil Book, 29) | 
 enlarge | Author: Daniel Carter Beard
Creator: Noel Perrin
Brand: Channel Craft
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
Buy Used: $0.47
You Save: $12.48 (96%)
New (36) Used (56) Collectible (1) from $0.47
Avg. Customer Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 17820
Media: Paperback
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 441
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.4 x 1.3
MPN: HBB
ISBN: 0879234490
Dewey Decimal Number: 790.194
EAN: 9780879234492
ASIN: 0879234490
Publication Date: October 1, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Standard used condition.
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Product Description
Written by the founder of the Boys Scouts, Dan Beard, his wife and daughter (Lena & Adelia), founders of the Campfire Girls. Full of indoor & outdoor activities.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 A Wonderful Book for Boys (and Girls)! February 16, 1999
59 out of 60 found this review helpful
I had a copy of this as a kid and read and re-read it to the point that the cover was more tape than original material. A wonderful guide to doing things yourself, and a welcome antidote to today's passive consumer paradigm of childhood. A fair number of the materials called for are hard if not impossible to find today, but the spirit of adaptation and improvisation that imbues this book will inspire the reader to find substitutes. Some parents may suspect the fair number of projectile- launching devices described, but the book is infinitely less violent than most child-oriented television shows and never fails to stress safety. My friends and I learned a lot of practical mechanics and crafting skills, developed our hand-eye coordination, and never shot anything more fragile than a plastic figure. We did a heck of a lot more damage to each other and our environment playing soccer and broomstick polo. My own future children will unquestionably have a copy of _The American Boy's Handy Book_ when they're old enough.
retro fun for active kids August 24, 2004
56 out of 57 found this review helpful
Filled with black & white illustrations and schematics, this guide for American boys, originally published in 1882, is organized by season and is chock-full of instructions, suggestions and advice about kites, fishing, knots, telescopes, tents, soap bubbles, animals, snowball warfare, puppets, kaleidoscopes, whirligigs, costumes, decoys--even fireworks!! The emphasis is on building things yourself, and to that end it is an extremely valuable handbook for our increasingly passive society. There are definitely things here that will give you pause or that are culturally dated -- like making a blow gun, trapping and raising wild animals and taxidermy at home -- but that is where parenting comes in, and all-in-all I would say this is a valuable and exciting book for kids, filled with pragmatic insights and a fun historical document as well. Snowball war, anyone?
 Great for teens & adults, but caution for kids March 12, 2003
48 out of 60 found this review helpful
This book is a wonderfully nostalgic stroll through simpler times of homemade fun, and a wonderful resource for teen and adult scouts and backpackers, but use caution with younger children. I purchased this for a 10-year-old who appreciates "old fashioned" books and is an active Cub Scout learning about camping. I was very disappointed to find that the book included some racial slurs that made me too uncomfortable to give it as a gift. An adult reader could consider the era in which it was written and overlook the references, but I wouldn't want to count on a 10-year old being able to make that same value judgement. It still would be a treasured resource for an adult to preview and share with children, project by project.
Great, highly recommended! May 19, 2005
43 out of 43 found this review helpful
This book was originally published in New York City, in 1890. It is the work of Daniel Carter Beard (1850-1941), a fun-loving boy-at-heart, who organized a boy's organization (the Society of the Sons of Daniel Boone) and was later instrumental in the establishment of the Boy Scouts of America. This book is a wonderful collection of projects that a boy can make, everything from kite making and fishing to tying knots and camping. Sound familiar?
Overall, I found the projects to be quite interesting. Some of them are a little out of step with modern sensibilities, such as putting broken glass onto kites to make "war kites," or making blowguns. But, that said, this is a great book with a lot of interesting projects, one that I am very glad that I got. So, if you have a young boy, and are interested in Scouting, or just plum making things, then this book is for you. My son and I highly recommend it to you!
Great for Scouts! November 13, 1999
32 out of 35 found this review helpful
I read this book for my own pleasure (as an adult) and refer to it for activities for my own sons (ages 3 and 7) and for my den of Wolf Cub Scouts (2nd graders). It's excellent and fun and useful!
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