The Field & Forest Handy Book

Daniel C. Beard was not only a founder of Boy Scouting in America, but also a prolific and engaging author. His great passion was making boys and girls feel at home in nature, to allow them to experience its wonders while fostering their sense of self-sufficiency and independence. The present volume introduces young people to the pleasures and challenges of camping. In it, Beard suggests any number of projects, plans, and schemes to entertain those whose travels take them into open fields and forests, who want to know everything from how to build kites and birdhouses to snow houses and snow men.

There are chapters on packing a horse, on making clothes and moccasins, on camp cooking, on building piers, boats, and sleds. As usual, the directions are clear, the diagrams simple, and the activities seductive. This is an age when the most common phrase one hears from children is "I"m bored." With this book in hand, you can send them into the smallest woodland plot and be sure they'll have an activity that will occupy them for hours, as well as projects that are not only fun to do but that actually work.

Reading level: Ages 9-12
Paperback 428 pages