'Dangerous' children's book set to top charts

It is a book that some parents would not want in the house, but a thesis that was rejected by at least 16 publishers is now an unlikely sensation in America.

"They told us that the risk of lawsuits from parents whose children had injured themselves following the book's advice was too high," said Julie Spiegler, who wrote the book Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), with Gever Tulley.

Reluctant to give up their proposal, the couple placed a short film of Tulley demonstrating his favourite five dangerous things to do on YouTube.

Encouraged by the response, Tulley and Spiegler decided to sell their book on a "print-on-demand" basis. In the first month, they sold more than 5000 copies and the demand continued.

The book is now the top title on Amazon site Kids' Active Books, and is steadily climbing up the overall bestsellers' list.

"We've gone from no publisher wanting to look at us to them jostling to offer us the highest price," said Spiegler.

"Penguin called us last Thursday, talking about international rights, and we had to tell them we've already had interest from a few other British publishers, as well as Chinese and Spanish companies. We couldn't be more delighted."

The success of the book is particularly surprising given the genuinely dangerous nature of its advice. "We disclaim any liability for injury that may result from any use - proper or otherwise - of the information in this book," Tulley writes in the disclaimer.

"We do not guarantee that any of the information is complete, safe or accurate."

But Tulley insists there is a serious point to encouraging children to do things such as licking a nine-volt battery, making a bomb in a bag, throwing things from a moving car and chucking items from high places.

"Of course, we must protect children from danger - that's the promise we make to them as a society," he said. "But when that protection becomes over-protection, we fail as a society ..."

Tulley defends each of his hair-raising exhortations. "I encourage children to drive a car - but to do it in an empty parking lot or an open, flat field while sitting on an adult's lap, so that the adult can work the pedals and still safely reach the steering wheel in case he needs to take control," he said.

"Cartoons show steering as spinning the wheel back and forth like a crazy person; actually piloting a car recalibrates a child's mental model and helps him understand that the adult who is driving is actually busy.

"It is an empowering moment when a child takes control of a massive machine."

He said gluing two fingers together will teach children to "better appreciate their usual physical condition by having to figure out how to accomplish our everyday tasks in spite of the glued fingers".

Tulley maintains the book will enhance children's safety by teaching them to distinguish the dangerous from the risky.

"We mitigate risk with 'scaffolding' - planning, practising by steps, and taking reasonable precautions," he said.

"Let children practise climbing trees, and they will learn to do it safely. If you never let them climb a tree, they will eventually do it anyway, possibly in the most unsafe manner. Or they may never do it at all, which might be the greater tragedy."

Peter Cornall, head of leisure safety at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and chairman of the Child Safety Education Coalition, agreed that some accidents can keep children safe.

"We have become too fearful of the wrong sort of accident," he said. "Parents are no longer able to see there is a benefit to their children having enough of the right sort of accidents. Children are losing any sense of where real danger lies."

- OBSERVER