Roxaboxen is a book that uniquely captures the experience of a recurring children’s game of imagination. The story follows a group of children who create a pretend town and develop different aspects of their imaginative lives there over many years. An unassuming hill becomes the site of domestic negotiations, invented commerce, and epic battles, depending on the day.
The story is framed as the reminiscences of adults who recall the game they played as children. The author, Alice McLerran, really heard such recollections from her mother about a place like Roxaboxen as she describes it in her simple prose. As a Kirkus review put it, “Many books memorialize imaginative play in the hope of inspiring a new generation, but rarely with so much creative and evocative power.”
Set in the hostile climate of Yuma, Arizona, the book offers an unconventional setting for a children’s book. The unexpected place seems to underscore the resilience of children who will go outdoors to play even in a place that reaches 110 degrees Fahrenheit for some of the year.
The book demonstrates the natural give-and-take of kid relationships, that marvelous training ground for life. Marian, the bossy one, conducts much of the game, but we are told “that was just the way she was. Nobody minded.” In the real relationships that accompany such fun play, the children practice patience with another’s faults and collaborate to enjoy something beyond what they can do independently.
Like Home in the Woods and They Were Strong and Good, McLerran uses oral history as the inspiration for her work. Her mother, the real-life Marian, also wrote down a history of Roxaboxen in 1916 at the age of 11. Marian and her sisters Anna May, Frances, and little Jean, played together with their neighbors in the early 1900s. In addition to Marian’s recollections, McLerran relied on interviews with other family members and hand-drawn maps of the area to piece together a narrative that is true to life.
McLerran came to writing children’s books after a varied and fascinating career. Her childhood was described as happy, growing up as an Army brat moving frequently with her parents and three siblings, both around the United States and internationally. The international experiences in part inspired McLerran’s interest in indigenous culture in Ecuador. After her first marriage ended in divorce, McLerran spent a year doing archaeological fieldwork in Ecuador with her three children in tow.
Years later, after completing her PhD and attaining an additional master’s degree and working in public health, McLerran met and married Larry McLerran, a theoretical physicist. Her new husband’s work continued to take her all over the world, making interesting friends wherever she went. In this stage of life, McLerran began to write children’s book.
Larry recalls that his wife wrote Roxaboxen while the pair were on what was supposed to be an outdoor getaway. He wrote, “I remember we had gone to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps for some hiking and vacation. We arrived and it rained and rained. `Roxaboxen’ was written during ten days of solid rain; Alice at least could use those days!”
What may have been a less than ideal hiking trip was, indeed, a wonderful use of writing time. Through the story, McLerran gives the outlines of a broad imaginative universe. From suggestive details scattered on every page, the reader can discover facets of personality and aspects of world created by the children. There are wonderful revelations, such as the fact the Anna May, “quiet little Anna May,” is a speed demon in her pretend car and frequently has to go to jail.
The passage of time happens subtly. The story constructed of memories doesn’t follow a chronology but instead fills in a geographical space. There are long periods of time when the children don’t even play at Roxaboxen, “when everybody was at school and the weather was bad,” but they can always pick up the game again.
Even when the children have grown and move away, the imaginative realm of Roxaboxen remains accessible at any time. The geography also expands, as when Charles, once a child playing on the hill, now an old man on the beach finds a rock on a faraway beach that calls to his mind the game.
The illustrator, two-time Caldecott recipient Barbara Cooney, described Roxaboxen as her “toughest assignments yet: constructing a magical world out of something that wasn’t there.” In preparation for the book, she made two visits to the desert where all she could see at first was “a small tan hill dotted with stones and rocks, a scattering of desert plants, and now lots of broken glass and an old car chassis.” McLerran’s aunt, Frances, accompanied her and brought the place to life with her recollections.
The resulting illustrations, McLarren called “luminous.”
Following the book, which was published in 1991, the popularity of the place grew. In 2000, Yuma, Arizona, made the site of the story Roxaboxen Park. A description of the park reads, “The ½ acre site at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 8th Street is not a typical park. There is no grass or playground equipment. Instead, the park is left much as it was in the 1900’s with the addition of an ADA accessible pedestrian path, informational displays, and seating areas. Children playing at the site are encouraged to use their imaginations and build a community utilizing rocks and boxes like the original ‘Roxaboxenites.’”
Each year, the park hosts Roxaboxen Festival, and year-round visitors leave painted rocks from their home state at the park. If you can’t travel down to Yuma, you can even mail your rock to the park.
A visitor to the park stopped by the public library to read the story before stopping by. He wrote, “It was really a fun visit and special in many ways to relive the ability of children once-upon-a-time long ago to create a world of fantasy.”
McLerran passed away in 2019 at the age of 86. She leaves a legacy of storytelling and imagination built on generations and a life of world travel and wide experience.
2 comments
Comments are closed.