Not A Box!

Everyone with or around kids know how fascinating cardboard boxes are for children.  Kids can play with a box for hours - sometimes the box is better than what came out of it! Antoinette Portis completely understands how a child's imagination works.

Have you seen Baby's First Christmas? If you haven't seen the video it's worth the 3 minutes, I laughed so hard, and the end with the box, it's every Christmas for the first 2 to 3 years!  Those first few Christmas with babies, toddlers, and preschoolers are the memories that Not a Box made me think of.  I love this book, I love everything about it, the illustrations, the concept, the simplicity of it all come together so well.

The Details:

Written and Illustrated by Antoinette Portis

Published by Harper Collins

Awards: Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor

Age Range (according to Amazon) 2-4years

Not a Box is a very easy read.  Each page spread has one sentence, the longest being six or seven words.  It's a great book for preschoolers and Kindergarten, to read aloud to little ones or to build confidence in those who are starting to read on their own.

The illustrations are so cute!  They are simple line drawings in black and red.  I think the simplicity of the bunny and the box is key to the next page where in red over the black outline from before is a new picture with more detail.  It shows what adults see compared to what a child is seeing.  I love it!  As you read "Why are you standing on a box?" before you turn the page have the children guess what the box could be.  Really spark their imagination.  Maybe he's standing on the box because he's the ring leader at the circus.  Maybe she is sitting in the box because she's the caption of a spaceship that's going to Mars.  Give them the chance to open their minds to all the possible things that box could be.

After finishing Not a Box I wanted to go and get a huge empty box for my girls to play in.  At Christmas time they do just that until the box no longer can stand up.  An empty box is just fine, but as the kids get older check out some of these cute ideas on things to make with boxes I've found on Pinterest that I love: box train, a huge castle, rocket ship or plane, there are so many ideas! From play sets to games to useful art easel.  Have cats?  How about making a cat tower?  Comment below what you've made and how it worked out.

Antoinette Portis also wrote a similarly named book Not a Stick.  This one I haven't read yet, my guess is that it's along the same lines of Not a Box, but kids running around with sticks makes me nervous that someone will get hurt.

There are also several other books about boxes that I now have to check out.  I think we might have to have a box party one day with all these great titles:


May your creativity and imagination be limitless!