The American Boy's Handy Book by Dan Beard

The American Boy's Handy Book by Dan Beard

Written by the founder of the Boy Scouts, Dan Beard. Full of indoor & outdoor activities for boys circa 1880.

"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 hopes that his son (or daughter) might still enjoy." - Washington Post Book World

"...fascinating projects guaranteed to teach and amuse for hours, and, since much has changed since 1882, a lot of those young readers will be girls." - St. Petersburg Times

"The Handy Book was the perfect survival manual. It contained plans for 16 kinds of kites and hot-air balloons and fishing tackle. It told you how to make and stock an aquarium, to construct a water telescope and how to camp out without a tent. Or in a hut made from pine boughs. How to build 10 kinds of boats, including a flatboat with a covered cabin. Iceboats, too. One-person canoes. Bird calls. Squirt guns with astonishing range and authority. 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 your great-grandboys." - Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times

Paperback, 441 pages