I dare you!

I am so delighted to have a chance to plug this book: The Double Daring Book for Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz. I've wanted this book to exist ever since I saw the authors of The Dangerous Book for Boys on Stephen Colbert and thought, "Well, yes, but what about the girls?" We bought the first Daring Book for Girls when it came out, and Eleanor brags about her possession of the book (which she can't yet read herself) whenever the opportunity comes up. For this second book, the authors have invited bloggers to dare each other do challenges from the book as part of the publicity for the book tour.

And here comes the book right in the time for summer vacation. More than anything else, the Daring Books make me think of all the esoteric knowledge to be pursued on summer days. They remind me of the way I learned in summer when I was a kid, dipping from this book and that and going from one subject to another. It was a great escape from the leveled readers and textbooks of the school year where we'd proceed from one step to its logical next. I loved and love summer learning with its haphazard poetry.

So The Double Daring Book invites girls to learn how to play global tic-tac-toe, build stone towers, make worry dolls, and learn about Eleanor of Aquitaine and other real life princesses (you can guess which princess will most interest our own Eleanor!). And fittingly there's a section on what to do when you're bored.

The first suggestion on what to do with boredom is to "Practice Dumb Tricks," and so I'll double-dare you to master a trick mentioned later in the book and which I have never succeeding in doing: hanging a spoon from your nose. Even though I can't do it myself, I never get tired of watching people do this trick. And I do know that about myself because my brothers would hang spoons on their noses throughout a family dinner. That's a lot of spoon watching.

Here are the directions from Buchanan and Peskowitz on page 274 of The Double Daring Book for Girls. "Method #1: Lay the spoon horizontally across the bridge of your nose. Find its center of gravity, and it will balance. Method #2: Rest the top part of your spoon on the tip of your nose. Good silver is too heavy, so grab a lightweight spoon instead..."

Good luck! If you succeed and if you are enchanted by your spoon hanging skills, send me a picture and I'll post it on the blog.

Oh, and by the way, the Daring Girls website is great: printable badges!