Big Box Boy

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Big Box Boy is a story about Norbert Hobart, a 10-year-old boy who decides to live in a Big Box store rather than with his evil relatives. Life in a Big Box offers him access to as much food, candy, and ice cream as he can eat, and all the television, computers, and video games he can watch or play. But having access to everything requires internal discipline, and Norbert soon learns that he must take care of his mental and physical needs if he is to make the most out of his life.

This is a wonderful story ideal for kids ages 7-12 or for anyone who has ever walked through a warehouse store and marveled at the foods and merchandise available.

Big Box Boy was originally conceived in 2006 as a way of modeling the writing process for my two young boys, Nate and Wade . My job as an educational researcher requires that I write policy papers for federal, state, and local clients. Writing is an iterative process, one entailing endless drafting and rewriting. So what better way to teach the art of writing than to actually do it?

Big Box Boy evolved into a family collaboration. Evenings I would rough out a few pages of a chapter. On weekends and weekdays, after the boys’ homework was done, the three of us would sit down and review the text, commenting on flow and vocabulary and proposing ideas for further development. The decision to have Norbert invent a computer game was Nate’s, with Wade contributing heavily to plot development and the personality of the store manager. The parent’s miraculous recovery was also the boy’s decision, since they declared it would be “too sad” if they didn’t survive.

Although the book has never been professionally copy edited or published commercially, kids in Nate’s and Wade’s classes have read the book and given it a universal ‘thumbs-up.’ For what that’s worth.

Thanks for reading this far.
If you download it, thanks for that too.

Steve