Okay. Let's take this real slow to make sure we're not missing anything. The book is called What comes in a box? Please forget about the double entendres and look at the cover. It's an old-fashioned river boat. No, wait, it's actually a street car made to look like an old-fashioned river boat. Okaaaay. And this relates to boxes how? Here's what the introduction has to say:
What comes in a box? is about shapes that look like boxes.
Not actual boxes, okay? Shapes that look like boxes. The introduction continues:
You will lean about the many shapes that look like boxes in the world around you. You will learn that there are many kinds of shapes in the world around you. Some of them are like boxes, and some of them are other shapes.
In this book you will meet Connie and Ben and many of their friends. They play a game, and you can play, too. They get many boxes and try to build something. They have to think of many things that are shaped like boxes. You can help them by thinking of all the things that you know about that are shaped like boxes.
Got it? They need boxes. So help them. Help them by thinking of things you know about that are shaped like boxes. Come on, it will be fun. Look, here they come now, your new friends Wendy, Ben, and Carol:
"I do not have a box," said Wendy. "But I see some cubes over there." (Apparently referring to a brick wall)
"No," said Ben. "Those are not cubes. They look like rectangles but we can not use them."
"Yes, we can," said Carol. They can be a tall church. I can make a pretty window for it."
Throughout, the author demonstrates this same uncanny ear for natural speech. Here Carol and Judy discuss a box of laundry soap:
"I have a big box," said Carol. "My mother uses lots of this."
"Lots of people use that," said Judy. "They go to a place where they can use it."
"This box can be that place," said Connie.
Say there was a child who was somehow able to get through this entire book, which is as obscure and terrifying as anything by Kafka, without being driven to dementia. That's where the little quiz section at the end comes in. I would like to emphasize two things here: I am absolutely not making any of this up, and nowhere in the book is there any word about the riverboat streetcar thing.
Okay, so let's have some of those quiz questions:
Mother had crackers in a box. The crackers were not:
a. food b. cubes
A bug is on the lug. Is the lug like a cube now?
a. Yes b. No
A man ran into a van. Is the van like a cube now?
a. Yes b. No
The only thing scarier than What comes in a box? is that it is actually part of a series of books, including such well-loved classics as What has three sides?, What has four sides? and What comes in a can? I saw What comes in a can? on the shelf next to What comes in a box? but didn't buy it. It had a box car derby on its cover.
PREVIOUS FABULOUS COVERS OF THE WEEK:
The Face of the Ancient Orient
What comes in a box?
The Age of Reason
The Coming of the French Revolution
Andre the Courier
Hide-Out
Brideshead Revisited
The Golden Book Sherlock Holmes
Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery, vol. 5
God's Smuggler
Mixology
The Score
The Frazer Acquittal
Wife or Death
Wild Game Cookbook
Crime Patrol No.9
Boy's Choice
The Value of Fairness
Cancelled Japanese Stamps
The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues
Scoop
Barchester Towers
Fathers and Sons
Evil Genius
Early Man in the New World
Camp Craft
The Man in the Net
7 Types of Ambiguity
Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust
The Idea, a novel told in woodcuts
The Simple Art of Murder
History Begins at Sumer, featuring the typography of Edward Gorey
Marvel Spectacular featuring the art of Jack Kirby
The Age of Analysis
Metropolis: An American City in Photographs
Engineering is Like This
The Ponder Heart
Don Martin Digs Deeper
The Golden Book Encyclopedia of Natural Science (Volume 9, Kinglets to Meteor)
The Mountlake Terrace High School 1964 yearbook
Take a Letter: A Cyclopedia of Business & Social Correspondence
The Vice Lords: Warriors of the Street
Islam and The Golden Home and High School Encyclopedia
Munakata
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Fabulous book cover of the month