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Showing posts from November, 2013
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Return to Roxaboxen with THEBOOKJEANIE Recently I took a roadtrip through the desert to the small town of Yuma, Arizona , the setting of Alice McLerran's timeless children's book Roxaboxen. Based on a handwritten book created by the author's mother in 1916, Roxaboxen tells the story of children who built their own magical world out of stones and wooden boxes, amidst the sand and thorny cactuses on a nearby rocky hill. In the town of Roxaboxen, the streets and houses were marked in the sand with white stones but "Frances. . .built herself a new house outlined in desert glass, bits of amber, amethyst, and sea-green: a house of jewels." There were two ice cream parlors - you could eat all you liked - and if you wanted to ride away "all you needed for a horse was a stick and some kind of bridle, and you could gallop anywhere." McLerran takes us back to a time when all that was needed for hours of childhood play was creativity and imaginati