For every boy from eight to eighty, covers essential boyhood skills such as building tree houses, learning how to fish, finding true north, and even answering the age-old question of what the big deal with girls is. In this digital age there is still a place for knots, skimming stones and stories of incredible courage. This book recaptures Sunday afternoons, stimulates curiosity, and makes for great father-son activities. The brothers Conn and Hal have put together a collection of all things that make being young, or young at heart, fun--building go-carts and electromagnets, identifying insects and spiders, and flying the world's best paper airplanes.--From publisher description.

Originally published: London : HarperCollins, 2006.

I didn't have this book when I was a boy -- Essential gear -- The greatest paper airplane in the world -- Seven wonders of the ancient world -- The five knots every boy should know -- Questions about the world: Why is a summer day longer than a winter day? Why is it hotter at the equator? What is a vacuum? What is latitude and longitude? How do you tell the age of a tree? [tree rings] How do we measure the earth's circumference? Why does a day have 24 hours? How far away are the stars? Why is the sky blue? Why can't we see the other side of the moon? What causes tides? How do ships sail against the wind? Where does cork come from? What causes the wind? What is chalk? -- Making a battery -- How to play stickball -- Fossils -- Building a treehouse -- The rules of soccer -- Dinosaurs -- Making a bow and arrow -- Understanding grammar: Nouns, Verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, articles, prepositions, interjections, sentences, subject and object, nominative and accusative, who and whom, clauses and phrases, tenses -- Table football -- Fishing -- Timers and tripwires -- Baseballs most valuable players -- Famous battles: Thermopylae, Cannae, Caesar's invasions of Britain, Hastings, Crecy, Waterloo, Balaclava, Rorke's Drift, The Somme, Lexington and Concord, The Alamo, Gettysburg -- The rules of Rugby Union and Rugby League -- Spies: codes and ciphers -- U.S. Naval flag codes -- Making crystals -- Extraordinary stories: Scott and the Antarctic ; The Wright Brothers ; Touching the Void ; Douglas Bader ; Robert the Bruce -- Making a go-cart -- Insects and spiders -- Juggling -- Astronomy -- Making a paper hat, boat, and water bomb -- Navajo Code Talker's Dictionary -- Girls -- Marbling paper [marbled paper] -- Cloud formations -- First aid -- The 50 states -- Map of the United States -- Mountains of the United States -- Making cloth fireproof -- Building a workbench -- Pocket light -- Five pen-and-paper games -- The golden age of piracy [pirates] -- A simple electromagnet -- Secret inks -- Sampling Shakespeare -- Grinding an italic nib -- Navigation -- The Declaration of Independence -- The Moon -- Skipping stones -- Pinhole projector -- Charting the universe -- Dog tricks -- Wrapping a package in brown paper and string -- Star maps: what you see when you look up -- Making a periscope -- Seven poems every boy should know -- Coin tricks -- Light -- Latin phrases every boy should know -- How to play poker -- Marbles -- A brief history of artillery -- The origin of words -- The solar system -- The Ten Commandments -- Common trees -- Chess -- Hunting and cooking a rabbit -- Tanning a skin -- Timeline of early American history -- Growing sunflowers -- Role-playing games -- Seven modern wonders of the world -- Books every boy should read -- Standard and metric measurements -- Dangerous Book for Boys badges.