THE BIG BROWN BOX

Russo (Mama Who Talks Too Much, 1999, etc) draws from family experience again for this domestic contretemps. Despite tears and parental pleas, Sam refuses to let little brother Ben join him in his washing machine box/house/cave/ship. Leave it to Mama to provide a solution satisfactory to all: another, smaller box placed alongside. Opposite text pages printed on fields of light, boxlike brown, Russo creates tidy, uncomplicated, graphic-style scenes of adults and children whose easily-read expressions map the story's emotional ups and downs. In the end, sharing a scenario in their individual spaces, both children happily blast off in their cardboard rockets to the Moon. Would that all such tempests would end so amicably. (Picture book. 5-7)