‘The Dangerous Book for Boys’ Goes Hollywood

By Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 4/8/2008 9:05:00 AM

The 2007 runaway best-seller The Dangerous Book for Boys is about to hit the big screen and the tube.

British authors Conn and Hal Iggulden were determined to woo boys away from their electronic, couch-potato lives. And they did so with their tongue-in-cheek how-to manual, which offers step-by-step instructions about treehouses, paper airplanes, fishing, and other traditional boy past-times. A new "factual" television series based on The Dangerous Book for Boys, (HarperCollins, 2007) is now in production and will feature celebrity fathers and their sons. The show will air on Britain's Channel 5, with a possible spinoff for the United States.

Disney and U.S. producer Scott Rudin also have acquired the film rights to Dangerous Boys—following a bidding war. But we’ll have to see if the movie will appeal to British kids or their American cousins. When the book made its leap across the Atlantic to the U.S. market, various British boy staples had to be replaced for the American edition. 

Thus conkers was replaced with stickball. And Britain's kings and queens historical list gave way to baseball's "most valuable players." Cricket was cut, along with Admiral Horatio Hornblower and the history of the British Empire. Added were the Wright Brothers, the Navajo code talkers of World War II, and Gettysburg and the Alamo.