The Big Book of Boy Stuff
by Bart King
A Book Review by Troy Parrish

  This book is in the same vein as The Dangerous Book for Boys. Written to appeal to boys it has a number of fun types of stuff in the books that will clearly appeal to boys. I actually found myself laughing out loud about some of the stuff in the book and was intreaged by some of the activities suggested in the book.

I was really enjoying the list of warnings that were taken off of actual products. My favorite was the warning on a crate of hammers. The warning stated that the contents of the crate could be harmful if swallowed. There is an entire list of these crazy warnings that are really fun to read. Another example was "Do not use this product while sleeping" found on a Hair Dryer.

The activities listed in the book are also fun to think about doing. If you want to do your own CSI type thing, there is instructions on how to use superglue to lift fingerprints off of an object as well as instructions on how to create match rockets.

These are definitely boy activities and there are more where those came from. This gives the book some redeeming value in that it may offer you some ideas that you can try with your boys, particularly as summer is coming on and you are going to be searching for things to keep them occupied in a constructive way.

Unfortuantely, the book is also chock full of what I would refer to as "potty humor" as well as encouragement for practical jokes, in fact this seemed to make up at least half of the book. I don't know about you, but my boys do not seem to need encouragement to enjoy potty humor or to play tricks on others. This is in sharp contrast to the book I reviewed last month, Raising a Modern Day Knight. Because of this, I would not recommend this book for casual reading by your boys. If you would like some ideas of things to try with your boys you could borrow it from the library and read it yourself for the ideas of better yet get The Dangerous Book for Boys or The American Boy's Handy Book. Both of these books have great activities in them as well as some historical information. They don't have the "potty humor" stuff that made The Big Book of Boy Stuff objectionable. So I must say that you probably would be better off passing on this one.