The book’s authors say that modern girls’ and boys’ interests can, and should, overlap, but there’s a history of girls’ activities—jump-rope chants, flower pressing—that they want to preserve. “It’s so easy to dismiss girlish things and dismiss girls at the same time,” says Buchanan. “It isn’t fair if girls feel they have to disown that part of their childhood to be taken seriously.” Not that the book is just recipes and knitting patterns. The first item on its list of “essential gear” is a Swiss Army knife. “We wanted to include cootie catchers next to women scientists,” says Peskowitz. Most of the activities are (arguably) gender-neutral. But where the boys’ volume included such drollery as the suggestion to lift something heavy to impress a girl, and, if the object proves too massive, “try sitting on it and engaging her in conversation,” “The Daring Book” is more prim: “If a boy doesn’t like you the way you are, the problem is him, not you.” The authors say this earnest tone is intentional. “We never thought this would be ‘a sassy girlfriend’s guide to being a girl’,” says Buchanan. As for the title, Peskowitz says, “people ask us all the time, ‘Why do boys get to be dangerous and girls get to be daring?’ But we love the word ‘daring.’ And it’s, like, copyright? Hello?”
