The Big Book of Girl Stuff

My daughter has owned The Daring Book for Girls for about a year now. She occasionally uses it as a reference when playing games or making crafts and has nice things to say about it. It has a lot of stuff for girls in it. That is why I almost didn't check The Big Book of Girl Stuff, written by Bart King and his five sisters, out of the library for her. Luckily, I did. This book proves what we all know: everything is better with humor. There are as many funny one-liners in here as there are tips and trivia. The result is that my eight year old is reading it from cover to cover. The cover is, by the way, reversible to a pink marble notebook look so girls can read it surreptitiously in school.

There is so much interesting information and humor in The Big Book of Girl Stuff that my daughter is reading sections that might not usually be of interest to her because she doesn't want to miss out on the laughs. While I cannot figure out a rhyme or reason to the organization of the sections, they all have good information and liveliness in common. A few of these sections are "Babysitting," "Fun Stuff to Do," "Sports," and "Slang." Proof that the book never takes itself too seriously is in the quotes which open each section, such as Gilda Radner's "I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn't itch" at the beginning of the section on fashion. Of course there is gross out humor in the "Ick" section which is good. That should not be reserved only for books marketed to boys.

On a personal note, there are two more things that made me happy I checked this book out for Hayden. First, she recently stopped reading and excitedly ran to ask me,"Do you know the meaning of the word blogging? Do you want to know?" I did know, but pretended I didn't as I was so touched that she was enthusiastic to share something from her book that she thought would interest me. I also like the fact that there is a section on nicknames because the author is not the only person who likes trivia. One of the best bits floating around in my brain is that there was once a Viking warrior nicknamed "Ivan the Boneless." This book gave me the reason to share that with my daughter and now you.

I can't say enough good about this fun book for tween girls. It really is, as I learned from the section on slang, a "sherbitt."