The Big Brown Box

Yesterday we got a book from the library that by now we must have read at least twenty times. It's by one of our recent favorite authors, Marisabina Russo, who seems to draw and write in realistic ways that Sava likes. It fascinates me that he is almost never drawn to far-flung fantasies or punning books that appeal to many other kids (for instance, Dr.Seuss), but instead prefers real-life situations, drawn with as much veracity as possible; he takes everything quite literally, and while he enjoys silly humor, he also always wants to know why things (or people) are the way they are. His earlier favorite by Russo, "The Line Up Book," is about a boy whose mother calls him to lunch, and he constructs a straight line of various objects--blocks, boots, bath toys--from his room to the kitchen, all the while hearing his mother's insistent voice; nothing much happens, but I think Sava likes the orderly progression that the "line" of objects represents. This new book tells of the same boy, Sam, using a big brown box to make first a house, then a cave, a ship, and a spaceship, and of his refusal meanwhile to let his younger baby brother participate in his games with the box. Unlike many other books, which try to sugarcoat sibling relationships, this one tells it as it is: the boys don't get along, and the older one is not interested in playing with the younger one. Sava loves the concluding pages of the book, where the younger boy also procures a smaller box, and the two brothers pretend to be flying two spaceships; Sava gets a kick every time we get to the words, "Three, two, one...blast off!"