In 1999, award-winning novelist Toni Morrison made her first foray into
the world of children’s literature.
The result is a picture book, The
Big Box, coauthored by Morrison’s son Slade and illustrated by Giselle Potter. A long story poem, the book focuses on
three children, Patty, Mickey, and Liza Sue. Each of the children, in turn, has behavior problems and is
sent, by parents and other authoritative adults, to live in a big box, a room
from which the children cannot escape.
They are provided with all the material comforts they could want, but
must live isolated in the box, the monotony broken by weekly visits from their
parents. Throughout the book, the
children are compared to animals who enjoy the freedom and liberty of the
natural world. While the adults
maintain that these severe restrictions are for the children’s own good, the
final page of the book depicts the three breaking down the walls of their box
to escape.
As in her fiction for adults, Morrison has created a work of strong
social commentary, questioning commonly held beliefs about the rights and
responsibilities of our youngest citizens. The three children in this book are portrayed as perfectly
normal children—energetic, exuberant, and perhaps a bit mischievous. But none of them is a serious problem
child; Patty talks too much in school, Mickey plays handball in his apartment
building, and Liza Sue sympathizes with the animals on her farm. None of them threatens social order. Clearly, the society that would repress
children to the extent of eliminating normal childhood is the real threat. Morrison manages to attack our
rule-bound society (rules are posted everywhere in the children’s world), as
well as our intolerance for the inconvenience that we so often associate with
children. She also comments
strongly on the materialism of contemporary American culture. When these children are put in the box,
they are obviously cut off from experience in the natural world; their parents
respond by filling their lives (their box) with stuff—toys, gadgets, total
consumer indulgence.
Unfortunately, Morrison’s message is a bit heave-handed, and the book
suffers. Critical response to The Big Box has been mixed, at
best. Reviewers agree that this
picture book holds little appeal or meaning from the traditional picture-book
audience: young children. The plot is boring for little people,
perhaps even a bit frightening, and the message doesn’t really apply to
them—children are the victims here, not the oppressors. Adults, on the other hand, are not
typically drawn to picture books, nor are older children. So The Big Box may be remembered purely
because it was written by Toni Morrison, not because millions of children
clamored to hear it every night at bedtime.
Beaulieu, Elizabeth Ann. The
Toni Morrison Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003. Print.
I believe that Toni Morrison’s The Big Box may be geared towards more mature audiences because the serious content may be inappropriate for younger children. I think that Morrison’s intent in including the solemn topic of oppression into the “children’s book” was to emphasize that it is important that children become familiar with the idea early in life that sometimes certain groups of people are persecuted for no good reason. By portraying the three innocent children in isolation, Morrison calls attention to the problem of discrimination because raising awareness about it is the first step in eliminating in it from the future. Morrison probably should have gone about organizing the plot differently so that the topic would be more appealing to children, and they would therefore likely take a greater interest in the underlying message that it is attempting to send. Overall, the theme of the work seems to be well-intended, but could use some improvement in the plot line.
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