Like most kids, Christina Katerina loves all kinds of boxes. So when her family buys a new refrigerator, she immediately claims the large cardboard box that is discarded as her own.

  
The box promptly becomes the blank canvas fuelling her imaginative adventures with her sometimes-friend Fats Watson, as it is transformed, by turns, into a castle and a clubhouse, among other things.

  
In recent years, there have been several terrific picture books inspired by the endless play-possibilities of cardboard boxes — the standouts being Not a Box
by Antoinette Portis, and On Sudden Hill by Linda Sarah and Benji Davis — but I think these probably also owe at least a small debt to Christina Katerina and the Box, whose eponymous heroine’s sparkling personality and creativity continue to spark the imaginations of generations of readers since it was first published in 1971 — a whopping 44 years ago!

The book’s charming inked illustrations by Doris Burn are timeless, and perfectly capture the simple pleasures of childhood adventures and friendship.