Product Description

First published in 1882, this is a wealth of projects and games, with practical directions on how to make them, by one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America. The ultimate pre-TV, anti-couch potato activity book, it answers the question, "What's there to do?"

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44170 in Books
• Brand: Channel Craft
• Published on: 1998-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.13 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 441 pages

Review
If Huckleberry Finn were to settle down, somewhere out there in the territory, and decide to become an author, he might very well come up with a book like this one . . . evoking the kind of boyhood that nearly every American man would like to have had himself, and hope that his son (or daughter) might still enjoy. --Washington Post Book World

Today you can be privy to all these splendid secrets . . . printed on acid-free paper and sewn in signatures, it will last to be handed down to you great-grandboys. --Henry Kisor, The Chicago Sun-Times

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About the Author

Customer Reviews

A Wonderful Book for Boys (and Girls)!
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
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, highly recommended!
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!