What To Do With a Box

by Jane Yolen, Chris Sheban (Illustrator)

Overview

If you give a child a box, who can tell what will happen next? It may become a library or a boat. It could set the scene for a fairy tale or a wild expedition. The most wonderful thing is its seemingly endless capacity for magical adventure, a feature imaginatively captured in cardboardesque art by Chris Sheban and rhythmically celebrated in this poetic tribute by renowned children's author Jane Yolen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568462899
Publisher:	Creative Company, The
Publication date:	03/08/2016
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	118,839
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 10.60(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD450L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 8 Years

About the Author

Jane Yolen has been called "the Hans Christian Andersen of America" due to her significant contributions to children's literature, especially her original and collected fairy tales. She has written more than 300 books, including the Caldecott Medal-winning Owl Moon, and earned numerous honors. She lives in Massachusetts and Scotland.

Chris Sheban has illustrated eight children's books, including A Night on the Range, The Shoe Tree of Chagrin, and Red Fox at McCloskey's Farm. His work has been honored with three gold and three silver medals from the Society of Illustrators. He lives near Chicago, Illinois.

Editorial Reviews

Yolen and Sheban work in tandem: Rather than giving directions, Yolen's minimal text and Sheban's dreamlike illustrations only suggest how the book might be read, and where things might go from there. They give the reader inspiration without instruction, allowing for the endless possibilities of creating with a cardboard box.

The New York Times Book Review - Lizi Boyd

"Charmingly captures both real life and imaginary adventures." - Booklist, Starred Review

"Intuitive, inspired executions of art and verse perfectly capture the unending fun of time spent inside a box." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review

From the Publisher

03/01/2016
PreS-Gr 1—Nothing sparks a child's imagination quite like a cardboard box. This book enumerates a variety of possibilities for this deceptively mundane container. When a boy, a girl, and a dog explore the uses of a large box, Yolen suggests it can become a library, a palace, a canvas, a boat, a car, or a plane. Sheban's acrylic, pencil, and watercolor illustrations are painted directly onto cardboard, its beige color and texture peeking throughout the softly glowing spreads depicting the box's many incarnations. Despite the rhyming text mentioning various fantastic prospects, the box itself remains unchanged, even as it's employed to tow an overturned Eiffel tower or fly through the air. VERDICT Though not as imaginative or charming as Antoinette Portis's Not a Box (HarperCollins, 2006), this is a sweet story that could be welcome in collections where books about imagination are in demand.—Yelena Alekseyeva-Popova, formerly at Chappaqua Library, NY

School Library Journal

★ 2016-01-09
An ode to cardboard, four sides, and flaps both honors and alerts children to the pleasures it houses. Jolly rhymes sing praise, perhaps prompting readers to look near their recycling bins for a fresh box. What else can be "a library, / palace, / or nook"? Add some dolls, and you've got a tea party. Paint a backdrop, and you're basking at the beach or sitting by a forest stream. Put simply, "A box! A box / is a wonder / indeed. / The only / such magic / that you'll / ever need." The succinct, straightforward simplicity of Yolen's singsong-y verse suits its subject: the everyday, plain-old, big-brown box. Sheban's inviting artwork, painted and drawn atop real corrugated and flat cardboard, makes clear the magic that happens when introducing imagination to an ordinary packing box. Warmth, depth, expanse, and humor all reside in his paintings, which show a red-haired white boy and dark-haired, slightly darker-skinned girl playing inside a box, their own illustrations and creativity at work. Sheban imbues the cardboard-box brown that covers and constitutes so much of these pictures with a honeyed amber that almost glows, especially alongside strokes of white acrylic paint that highlight each spread. Intuitive, inspired executions of art and verse perfectly capture the unending fun of time spent inside a box. (Picture book. 3-8)

Kirkus Reviews