The American Girl's Handy Book: How to Amuse Yourself and Others

Explore, hike, discover, be crafty and have fun with friends or alone, indoors or outside

Written for children in 1893, and valuable for both kids and adults today, here's a magical cornucopia of projects, devices, toys, gifts, dolls, recipes, decorations, perfumes, wax and clay modeling, oil and water-color painting and games, all with clear and practical directions for how to make and play them.

Vintage Americana by the Beard sisters, two of the founders of the girls scouting movement (when they weren't campaigning for women's rights). As Anne M. Boylan writes in her foreword, "Healthy and spirited, the American Girl thinks nothing of taking a ten-mile 'romp' through woods and fields with a group of friends, and collects flowers and leaves for preservation or presentation to friends and relations.

Above all, however, the Beards' girl is handy. She can make a hat rack, a screen, or a bookshelf; fashion a macrame hammock or a cornhusk doll; and draw, paint, sculpt, or decorate a room...By emphasizing what girls can do, The American Girl's Handy Book presents a portrait of girlhood that is vigorous, active, and full of possibilities."

Lina Beard and Adelia Beard were cofounders of the first American girls' scouting group which became the Camp Fire Girls. Both were active in the equal rights movement for women and co-authored several books together, the most well-known of which is The American Girls' Handy Book (1893). They were the sisters of Daniel Carter Beard whose books include The American Boy's Handy Book (1882), The Field and Forest Handy Book (1906), and The Book of Camp-Lore & Woodcraft (1920).

Anne M. Boylan is an historian of the 19th century United States and of women and gender.