May 26, 2025 By Maria
What is the box? Is it a device for carrying something? Is it a way to transport something through the mail? Is it used for storage? Treasure? Trash? Maybe you think it belongs in the recycling bin. But my question is, what do your kids think a box is? Well, in our house whenever we get a box from a purchase or in the mail, my kids have plans for it. They are always trying to get their hands on new boxes. Sometimes, I even hide new ones in the basement because I know I can’t handle another new box creation in the house. My kids once used an oversized box to make a “duplicator” and a “transmogrifier” like Calvin does in the Calvin and Hobbes comics. They had blasts of fun with that box and their imagination.
The books here are all about kids and their boxes and how imagination leads them to find new and creative uses for their boxes. Our favorite book here is probably Christina Katerina and the Box by Patricia Lee Gauch. We love the interactions between Christina Katerina and her neighbor and all the creative things that they do with their gigantic box. It starts as a club house and ends as the dance floor at a grand party. Meanwhile, Christina’s mother continually attempts to get her to relinquish the box to the trash bin.
My kids really enjoy Not a Box by Antoinette Portis. This book is similar to another book my kids also enjoy by the same author called Not a Stick. In Not a Box, a bunny plays with a box – sitting in it, standing on it, even squirting it with water. While an off-page voice, presumably an adult asks, “Why are you sitting in that box?” “Why are you standing on that box?” To which the bunny always responds with a version of “It’s not a box” and illustrations showing what the bunny is imagining with the box.
What to Do with a Box by Jane Yolen goes through all the various imaginative uses of a box with detailed and fun illustrations by Chris Sheban. One thing all these box books do is really make me wish I could play with the box. We have some great memories of our kids playing with boxes over the years. During the pandemic, we had large, long boxes from furniture that we bought. We used the huge sheets of cardboard to create a cardboard castle in our living room with a working drawbridge. The kids had so much fun with the cardboard castle. They were very sad when it finally came time to remove it from the living room and send it off to the recycling center.
Also, when we bought a scooter several years ago, my daughter turned the narrow box into a train, and she would sit in the box and ask my husband to take her back and forth to different destinations in the house. She would also pass the “ticket” through a small hole in the side of the box. She was tiny and light enough to carry it like that, but it was still tiring work for him. The smiles on both their faces after train rides were the best.
Smiles always came to my kids’ faces when we read Box by Min Flyte. It is a lift-the-flap book about kids discovering what’s in their box and what they can do with said box. The artwork by Rosalind Beardshaw and flaps make this very fun to read. This is especially fun to read with small children. My kids all loved to lift the flaps when we read this book when they were tiny. What kid doesn’t love a lift-the-flap book? I have several destroyed ones as proof of it.
I know kids playing with boxes all around the house is annoying and it is clutter. Not just small easy to clean up clutter, like a pile of toys, but big obstructive clutter. However, dealing with the annoyance and letting them have that imaginative play really pays off. They make great memories and have awesome stories to share. My kids still talk with a happy wistfulness about the cardboard castle five years later and Kristian Catherina is still one of their favorite books. Maybe it will begin with a delivery and end in a spaceship, have fun with some boxes!
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