Meg goes to Maker School to hone her talent for building with boxes, but when Simone, another boxitect, arrives they become so competitive they nearly fail in the annual Maker Match.

Visiting their uncle's seaside home for the summer, a brother and sister open a mysterious trunk in a back room and discover a sinister-looking pirate puppet that comes to life and takes them captive.

Ginny tries to reach and open a box using a chair, then a grappling hook, then a catapult, while the narrator suggests ways to keep her away from it.

In small-town Michigan, twelve-year-old Zoomy and his new friend Lorrol investigate the journal found inside a mysterious box and find family secrets and a more valuable treasure, while a dangerous stranger watches and waits.

"What happened?" I asked, leaning against a folding chair as I tried to catch my breath. Julia glanced up at me coolly, and then reached for a box I hadn't noticed on the other side of the table. "Well, we received a disturbing package," she said. The box was about a foot square. Carefully angling it away from Carrie, Julia cracked the top of the box open. When I saw what was inside, my stomach roiled and I had to look away. Who would send something...

Ten-year-old Leo's future and the fate of the extraordinary Whippet Hotel, where his father is the maintenance man, are at stake when a series of cryptic boxes leads Leo to hidden floors, strange puzzles, and unexpected alliances.

Everybody starts somewhere, and once upon a time Luigi Lemoncello was a twelve-year-old boy in a large family who dreamed of being a showman; he gets his first chance working for a famous barker at a summer carnival where a mysterious puzzle leads him and his friends on a treasure hunt.

Sixteen-year-old Min Green writes a letter to Ed Slaterton in which she breaks up with him, documenting their relationship and how items in the accompanying box, from bottle caps to a cookbook, foretell the end.

A Caldecott Honor Book
Vasya Kandinsky was a proper little boy: he studied math and history, he practiced the piano, he sat up straight and was perfectly polite. And when his family sent him to art classes, they expected him to paint pretty houses and flowers—like a proper artist.
 
But as Vasya opened his paint box and began mixing the reds, the yellows, the blues, he heard a strange sound—the swirling colors trilled...

Evelyn Del Rey is Daniela's best friend. They do everything together and even live in twin apartments across the street from each other: Daniela with her mami and hamster, and Evelyn with her mami, papi, and cat. But not after today--not after Evelyn moves away. Until then, the girls play amid the moving boxes until it's time to say goodbye, making promises to keep in touch, because they know that their friendship will always be special. The tenderness...