From The Boston Globe
By Ellen Goodman

I’m willing to bet that Judd Apatow didn’t read “The Dangerous Book for Boys,” or at least not the chapter on “Girls.” The advice includes such tidbits as “be careful with humor,” “avoid being vulgar,” and “make sure you are well-scrubbed.”

If he had followed this, Apatow might never have produced “Superbad,” let alone “Knocked Up,” two films that have provided boffo box-office bookends to a summer of boytalk. Both star spectacularly vulgar and unscrubbed males of adolescent age or mentality who incredibly win over sane, attractive women.

The remarkable thing is that the best-selling book and the number-one movie are out there offering the most opposite and fanciful revised images of boyness since the culture became obsessed with the “boy crisis,” the “boy trouble,” and assorted imaginary “wars against boys.”

“The Dangerous Book for Boys” presents a Masterpiece Theatre version of a boy’s world. It’s a nostalgic compendium that ranges from instructions on how to make a tree house and a paper airplane to which lines of Shakespeare you should know and which stories of ancient battles you should remember.

Conn Iggulden, one of the two British brothers who compiled this book, promotes it by saying that boys are hardwired to seek danger and “need to learn about risk.” But the only danger in the book is in the title. The rest is tame stuff fit for an era when kids wear helmets to ride tricycles and parents worry about everything from online predators to toys made in China.

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