Cardboard Box Books for Babies and Toddlers
Ideas for Imaginative Play With Cardboard Moving Boxes
May 5, 2009
Babies and toddlers may first interact with small cardboard shipping boxes by hiding behind them and perhaps chewing on them, but as their capacity for imaginative play develops, soon young children can use their imaginations to transform a simple cardboard box into a variety of creative play spaces.
Cardboard Box Books for Babies and Toddlers
While babies and toddlers will benefit from being allowed to explore uses for a small shipping box on their own, they will also enjoy being read stories about how other children (and animal characters) think up different ways to play with cardboard shipping boxes. Any of the following children's picture books about playing with cardboard boxes can inspire young kids to try some creative, imaginative ideas for how to use a cardboard packing box.
The Birthday Box – Imaginative Play with Cardboard Boxes
The Birthday Box by Leslie Patricelli [Candlewick, 2007] is an exploration of the classic truth that kids prefer playing with the box in which a gift came to playing with the gift itself. In this case, the present inside the cardboard gift box turns out to be a dog that ends up playing in the gift box alongside the main character.
Each bright acrylic paint illustration sets the diapered baby main character and the gift box against a single-color background to focus the reader's attention on how the baby is playing with the box on each page. The main character's explorations of his box progress from simple actions like standing on it and hiding behind it to more complex actions like climbing inside it to pretend that it is various objects and finally using scissors to cut holes to transform it into a robot costume. Reading about each scenario will teach babies and toddlers how to play with a box.
My Book Box – Cardboard Box Crafts
My Book Box by Will Hillenbrand [Harcourt Children's Books, 2006] will give babies and toddlers ideas for things to do with small shipping boxes. Each illustration and simple line of text pair to portray one way that a cute young elephant and his frog friend can use a small cardboard box. The first section of the book shows the elephant and frog trying out a number of creative uses for the box (storage for pasta, dirty socks, or toys), while the second half shows the various uses to which it can be put as a "book box" after the elephant stores books in it.
It is the concept of a "book box" that sets this sweet children's picture book apart from other stories that cover the same topic. The elephant does use its cardboard box in such classic ways as racing a car, taking off in a rocket ship, and driving a train. However, in each scenario the elephant is pictured reading one of the books stored in the box while playing with the box. This subtly makes the point that the elephant is drawing inspiration for its imaginative play from these stories and teaches kids that a child can get everything he or she needs to play out of a book. Instructions for a cardboard box craft are included at the end, explaining how kids can make their own book boxes.
Not a Box – How to Play with Cardboard Boxes
As simple itself as a cardboard box in its design and color scheme, Not a Box by Antoinette Portis [HarperCollins, 2006] illustrates the various imaginative uses to which a rabbit puts a small rectangular box. Over and over, the narrator's voice asks the rabbit what it is doing with the box, and each time the rabbit repeats that "it" is not a box. Kids will enjoy identifying what, in fact, "it" is each time.
Portis adopts the artistic technique (used also by Hilary Knight in Eloise) of drawing the "real" scene of the rabbit and the box with black lines and the imagined portions with red lines. This helps children see exactly which details the rabbit adds each time to transform the box into a burning building, a ship, a robot costume, and so on. For extra fun after reading the book, parents can provide toddlers (and older kids) with drawings of black rectangles and invite kids to use red lines to draw various pictures of what they imagine these "boxes" could be.
Books About Cardboard Pretend Play Toys
Reading cardboard box books for babies and toddlers can give the youngest children ideas for ways to play with small cardboard shipping boxes. Older children may enjoy reading more complicated children's picture books about playing with cardboard boxes or books that describe how to make different cardboard box crafts.
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