Lewis - The Mammoth Book of Boys Own Stuff

Jon E. Lewis was a boy once and is the father of a boy (and a girl) now. His previous books include Fatherhood: An Anthology, The Mammoth Book of Pirates, The Mammoth Book of True War Stories, The Mammoth Book of the West, The New Rights of Man, The Mammoth Book of the Edge, and The Mammoth Book of How It Happened.

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Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2008

Copyright Jon E. Lewis, 2008 (unless otherwise indicated)

The right of Jon E. Lewis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication
Data is available from the British Library

UK ISBN 978-1-84529-709-1
eISBN 978-1-78033-276-5

First published in the United States in 2008 by
Running Press Book Publishers
All rights reserved under the Pan-American and
International Copyright Conventions

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

US Library of Congress number: 2008923887

US ISBN 978-0-7624-3380-3

Running Press Book Publishers
2300 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103-4371
www.runningpress.com

Visit us on the web!

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Printed and bound in the EU

This ones for my son and my father, Tristram and Eric.

IF

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, dont deal in lies,

Or being hated, dont give way to hating,

And yet dont look too good, nor walk too wise:

If you can dream and not make dreams your master;

If you can think and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth youve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: Hold on!

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything thats in it,

And which is more youll be a Man, my son!

In this bright new world of screen amusement at the tap of a key or the flick of a switch its easy to forget that boyhood should be about making bows and arrows, creating volcanoes from cupboard goods, learning up more facts than your friends about cars, and even building something BIG like your own canoe. But its safe to say that a boyhood without such things is not a boyhood that a man will look back on and remember with pleasure. No man is going to regret not having spent more time in front of a screen as a boy.

The Mammoth Book of Boys Own Stuff is a bogglingly large guide to getting a life as a boy, from learning how to trap game to making secret ink, from learning the basics of carpentry to performing magic tricks.

And heres the small print. Boyhood is about having fun. But its also about learning. Boyhood is when you need to begin to explore the world and your place in it. There is no avoiding that; however the payoff is a) youll be topps at skool b) the more you learn as a boy the better informed you will be as a man. So The Mammoth Book of Boys Own Stuff provides some of the basics all boys need to know, in geography, grammar, science, maths, history and literature. Boyhood is also the right time to train your character. Youll find valuable instructions inside, as well as examples to hold before you of courage and endurance, such as Scott at the South Pole and Jack Travers Cornwell, the boy sailor who won the Victoria Cross at the battle of Jutland in 1916. Boys need such heroes.

A guide to life, the universe and pretty much everything The Mammoth Book of Boys Own Stuff is full of entertainment as well as important facts on how to be an all-round great person. There are short stories by such ace writers as Rider Haggard and H.G. Wells. And included for no extra cost the worlds official funniest joke.