Sunday, May 04, 2008

"Dangerous Boys" and "Daring Girls"



Sophie loves her Daring Book for Girls and brought it with her this visit. It is one cool book. I kept borrowing it. I learned about a scary slumber party game called "Bloody Mary", had my palm read by Sophie and watched she, Ella and Gillen make friendship bracelets - all from the inner secrets of the book. Did you know that Julia Child, of French ("save the liver"!) cooking fame, was once a spy? It's true. I learned it in the book.

Seeing Sophie loving her Daring Book inspired Gillen to take a second look into his Dangerous Book For Boys. He was not disappointed. I went to say goodnight to he and Jesse and Mindy's boys in their room last night and Gillen was reading the all important Dangerous Boy's page about girls to the other boys.

This morning, Sophie shared her book's chapter about boys and Gillen read his about girls, to the females this time. I could have used this advise at their age. Girls were instructed that boys were not necessarily as gross, messy and silly as the stereotype. Friendship with boys was considered a good idea (as well as a tongue-in-cheek suggestion to maybe wait until age nineteen to take an interest in boys).The boys were warned that girls didn't necessarily like secret messages drawn in urine or to hear a boy pass gas. I liked it very much, especially as read by these two - so innocent and wise, and not in any way clueless as I was about the opposite sex. They have true friends of the opposite sex, including one another.

6 comments:

kelli said...

How fun, I'd never heard of those books. I think we'd like them :)

I love how they can be friends and they don't have other kids or parents telling them that they can't. A couple of Kyra's best friends a couple of years ago were boys. But they went to school and she didn't.. and it all changed. They didn't call her back anymore and just wouldn't talk to her. :(

mindy said...

I so loved that day, and our kids, and the multiple levels of friendship our families share.

Jessica said...

We LOVE those books! In fact, the "boy" one was one of the books we brought with us in the car to read on the way to L&L (before the Girls book came out, which we now have, too). It was so fun in many ways, but Ella (my Ella) kept coming back to the advice for boys on talking to girls.
We were afraid the "girls" book would dumb it down, but it didn't seem to.

Sara said...

That last picture reminds me of my mom at that age. Cute. Those books look like a lot of fun!

Kaat said...

I got the Book for Dangerous Boys for Amie before Daring Girls came out. I'll have to get that one for her too! I wish I had had those books as a kid! I grew up - a kid in the seventies - at a time when girls were allowed to be more boylike, more adventurous (which was my thing), but there wasn't an "official culture" for us yet. I'm happy we've all loosened up about girls climbing trees and hunting with slingshots now that my daughter will soon be ready for such a thin - if she's so inclined, of course.
Love the picture of the two kids!

Deanne said...

I have a smile on my face almost as big as in your pictures! It's contagious, the joy of children, isn't it?