THE DARING BOOK FOR GIRLS

Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz (HarperCollins, £20)

More than a million copies of The Dangerous Book for Boys by the Iggulden brothers have now been sold, with the follow-up, The Dangerous Book for Boys Yearbook, also selling well.

Last year, Rosemary Davidson and Sarah Vine weighed in with The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls, which reminded the world of what young ladies were like in the 1940s and 1950s.

As well as advice on how to make daisy chains, that book courted controversy by telling girls the best way to give a "Chinese burn".

Publisher HarperCollins is now fighting for its share of the nostalgia market, with another feminine follow-up to the Dangerous Book for Boys, which perhaps should be called The Daring Book for Tomboys.

There is no time for daisy chains and lipstick top tips, and the contents focus on a book for "every girl with an independent spirit and a nose for adventure", which makes it an interesting read for boys too.

There are passages on pioneering women who changed the world, including Indira Ghandi, the Suffragettes, Florence Nightingale and Amelia Earhart.

For those going into business, there's a section on the stock market and there's a fascinating passage entitled Boys, which appears to have been very carefully written.

Girls have several options concerning boys, the authors advise, with the first being "to ignore them until you (and they) are 19. Or 21 or 25.

"Alternatively, you could make a boy your best friend. Boys can be excellent friends. In general, they like to do things and that makes them rather fun.

"Of course, a third option is romance. Some girls might be interested in this kind of thing, other girls might think this would be too icky to even imagine."

The underlying message in this book seems to be: "Anything boys can do, girls should be able to do as well, but getting too close to boys could be dangerous in itself."