Not a Box
Antoinette Portis
Notable Children's Books Winner
Theodor Seuss Geisel Award Winner for 2007
Wrapped in basic, grocery-bag-brown paper, this streamlined book visualizes a child’s imagined games. "Why are you sitting in a box?" reads the opening page, opposite an image of a small rabbit, drawn in the simplest, unshaded lines, who appears next to a square. "It’s not a box," reads the text, presumably in the rabbit’s defiant voice, on the next page, and equally simple red lines overlay the black-lined rabbit and box to show a speeding roadster. In the following spreads, the questioner (a clueless adult?) continues to ask about the rabbit’s plans, while the little voice answers with the book’s protest of a title. This owes a large debt to Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955). And as in Johnson’s classic, the spare, streamlined design and the visual messages about imagination’s power will easily draw young children, who will recognize their own flights of fantasy. - Gillian Engberg