Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis

Like Not a Box, the first picture book by Antoinette Portis, Not a Stick celebrates the creativity of kids. Or in this case, a pig. This little piggy found a stick, and with it he's just as busy as his rabbit friend was with that box. Matter of fact the rabbit makes a guest appearance as a drummer!

The dedication page shoes a tree with one lonely stick broken off and the pig glancing up at it. I wouldn't have thought it possible with drawings this simple, but that pig has a creative sparkle in his piggy little eye as he's checking out that stick.

This time the grown-up (the assumed grown-up, anyway) skips questions and jumps right to warnings. "Hey be careful with that stick." It is rather pointy, I guess, and one might mistake the creative sparkle in the pig's eye for mischief. Maybe. Nevertheless, the warnings come. Look where you're going, watch out where you're pointing, don't trip. All about the stick!

But, of course, it's not a stick. It can catch sharks! It can create a van Gogh! Dragons? No problem! Can a stick do that?

No stick can do all that, but this is not a stick. Matter of fact, that's exactly what the pig says. "It's my Not-a-Stick."

Not a Box by Antoinette Portis

Not a Box is dedicated "To children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes." At one time or another - and upon first glance this may seem hard to believe - it's been you. The kid sitting in the box. And me. And the kid down the street. And, well, pretty much everyone.

Parenting brings all sorts of frustrations. Don't get me wrong, there are innumerable joys, triumphs, accomplishments, milestones and the like. But there are frustrations, and one of the biggest goes something like this:

Kid gets gift. Kid opens gift. Kid pulls gift out of box. Kid sets gift aside. Kid plays in box.

And one of the biggest frustrations of being a kid is having to explain why. "Ah, sheesh," the kid mumbles quietly. "It's not a box. I...am...NOT...playing...in...a...box!" The child thinks, why can't others see what is so plainly obvious?

So finally we arrive at Not a Box. (Was I right? It has been you, hasn't it?) The book opens with a simple question: "Why are you sitting in a box?" In my mind it's a grown-up asking the question. A very stiff grown-up. A very stiff grown-up who has forgotten the experience and wonder of being a child. But the straight-faced bunny simply replies, "It's not a box." Never does the bunny explain what it is, but the pictures show exactly what the bunny sees. And it definitely is not a box.

The questioner finds the bunny on top of the box, squirting the box, and wearing the box. But of course, it's not a box. (The bunny gets rather forceful in later pages. You would too when dealing with someone seemingly blind - and possibly dim-witted - who can't see the obvious.)

Like There is a Bird on Your Head and all the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems, Not a Box works great with beginning readers to partner read back and forth. I can imagine kids making their own versions of the book. After all, what kid can't imagine something cool to do with a box? They could copy the words and style but create their own not-a-box pictures.

Hey! Maybe they could even draw their pictures on the side of their very own box!

(Okay, I need to confess. I tried to be really creative right there with that whole side-of-the-box thing. But I stole the idea. From a five-year-old. Nevertheless, trust me. This is one cool book.)