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A Cure for Curiosity

Andrea Delbanco

Maybe you aren't eager to learn how to skin a rabbit. Possibly you already know how to use Morse code. Or, perhaps you aren't a boy. Still, chances are The Dangerous Book for Boys has information that will interest you--even if the title puts you off. The how-to guide has easy-to-follow instructions about more than 75 topics, including how to build a tree fort, skip a stone or create fireproof cloth. Already a best seller in Britain, The Dangerous Book recently won a top British book prize. It hits stores in the United States this week.

Brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden aimed to write the book that they wanted to read when they were boys. "We had some old books in the house with titles like Chemical Amusements and Experiments," says big brother Conn. "I remember endlessly looking through these (books), generally to find things that I could make explode or set on fire." Don't get the wrong idea from the title, though. As wild as it gets, The Dangerous Book doesn't deliver tips about how to do anything truly risky or unsafe.

The brothers tested all of the instructions in the book themselves. "Rule Number 1 was we either had to make it or do it," explains Conn. "We've both read books where the author clearly hasn't made a raft or whatever, and so the instructions don't work."

The Dangerous Book can satisfy the curiosity of any kid, so why is it written especially for boys? "It's not exactly that we are excluding girls," says Conn. "But we wanted to celebrate boys because nobody has been doing it for a long while."

Next: Where It All Began