Up to No Good: The Rascally Things Boys Do

Boys will be boys. Which is to say they will be naughty. Up to No Good is a charming look at the "rascally things boys do," with fun black-and-white photos of a diverse assortment of lads and anecdotes related by now-grown men about their youthful exploits. (Last names have been omitted to protect the guilty.) John, born in 1959 in Connecticut, remembers kissing rocks and throwing them at his favorite girls. Peter (1964, New York) recalls making a nun scream by smearing ketchup on his shirt and pretending to have jumped out his Catholic school window. Mark (1960, Ohio) admits to pocketing a dissected pig snout in biology class and reattaching it to a school water fountain. The stories evoke a more innocent time, when sticks and stones were the principal weapons, and a prank could be forgiven if imaginative enough. Up to No Good makes a fine gift book for Dad or that particularly mischievous fellow we all know.