Not a Box (edition 2006)

A good book focused on creativity and rethinking uses for a common object like a cardboard box. ( )

The title of this picture-book for very young children reminds me of Magritte's famous painting, La trahison des images (The Treachery of Images), in which an image of a pipe is labeled: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"). Rather than calling into question the distinctions between image and reality, however, Not a Box is a charming juxtaposition of the prosaic (and one presumes, adult) perspective, when confronted with a cardboard box, and the creative response of the child, when confronted with the same. As the rabbit-like child keeps informing the off-screen questioner, this is NOT a box. It is a mountain, a burning building, a robot suit, and much, much more! It is, in short, whatever the child wants and needs it to be, in the course of her imaginative play.

I enjoyed Not a Box enough that I'm considering tracking down the follow-up, Not a Stick, but I have to wonder whether the very young children who make up the ideal audience for it, visually speaking, will really appreciate the story. It's not a question of understanding, so much, but of interest. Will young readers be as entertained by the juxtaposition of perspective, mentioned above, as adults? I suspect that this one plays more to the adult fascination with, and nostalgia for, the make-believe of youth, than to a genuinely childlike appreciation for play. Then again, perhaps I am (like so many other reviewers that I myself have criticized) underestimating the young reader...? ( )

A cardboard box can become whatever you make it to be. This tale tells of a bunny who turns a cardbox box into, well, not a box. Let your imagination run wild! Can I get a classroom box please? Would be SO much fun for the kids to decorate and create! ( )

Have you ever wondered why children get more fun out of cardboard boxes than out of some of the other toys they own? Well this book lets you in on the secret of the box: the fact that to the child it is not a box. With its child-like persona of a young rabbit changing his box into ultimately anything he wants it to be, this book explore the child's never ending imagination and allows the child to see that there are many ways to see something, you just have to have the right sense of view to find it.

This book follows a genderless rabbit as it plays with a box. The bunny uses his or her imagination to transform the box into a number of different things. This book is especially interesting because it emphasizes the properties of a box and, by extension, rectangles, while encouraging creativity. This approach to a mathematical concept is powerful and could launch more discussions of what is or isn't one thing or another, potentially leading to work with diagrams. A fun, minds-on book for students k-3. ( )