Roxaboxen Joins Terabithia as a World of Pure Imagination

Yesterday, I finished the sixth book in the Trixie Belden series, in which Trixie and her friends spend the Christmas holiday in Arizona. Apparently I couldn’t get enough because today I was back again, this time courtesy of Roxaboxen, a picture book written by Alice McLerren and beautifully illustrated by Caldecott Award winner Barbara Cooney.

It was my familiarity with Cooney that led me to pick this book up on my last trip to the library, having no idea what it was about. As I read it, I was drawn into the charm of what Roxaboxen turns out to be: a magical town created by a group of children in Yuma, Arizona. What’s extra cool about this is that the book is rooted in the childhood memories of McLerren’s mother and other relatives. It reminds me of the mystical kingdom that young best friends Jess and Leslie create for themselves in Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia and also of the community of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan. These are kids using a few basic materials and a lot of imagination to create a haven where they reign supreme.

McLerren writes in a sparse but lovely style suited to the barren beauty of the desert where the story is set. Roxaboxen exists atop a rocky hill, with no vegetation but cacti and other forbidding plants. It’s not much to look at – to the untrained adult eye, anyway. But the children who live nearby work to release the wondrous town they know lies latent from its prison of dirt and stone. They build houses out of crates. They build streets out of pebbles and “drive” on them with “cars,” an activity that consists of walking or running with a round object in hand for a steering wheel. They add slowly to their village, with shops and restaurants and currency, and gradually, it becomes a truly breathtaking place, partly because of their artistic creativity but mostly because of the way it has begun to take shape in their minds. The more time they spend in Roxaboxen, the more real it becomes to them.

Cooney’s illustrations capture this mingled sense of simplicity and awe. She shows us what is literally there, but in such a way that it seems like so much more. The gentle paintings are so enticing that I found myself wishing I could step into Roxaboxen myself, much like Mary Poppins hops into Bert’s chalk drawing on the London pavement. The layout of the town is appealing, and the coloring of the sand and the sky is just gorgeous, especially in the final, wistful two-page spread, in which the children who built Roxaboxen remember it fondly as their twilight years approach.

A warm celebration of imagination and companionship and the power one has to enhance the other, Roxaboxen is pure enchantment.