Not a Box: A Great Book About Divergent Creativity

“Not a Box” by Antoinette Portis beautifully illustrates the magic of divergent creativity that defines a big part of pretend play. The book brings its readers to the magical world of play, and encourages them to think like a child and stop seeing the box as a box, but as a building on fire, a car, a volcano, a rocket, a balloon, a magic hat, a robot, or a ship! It’s not about the box, it’s about your imagination that turns it into 100 different things you can play with. In a way, the book also has a simple message about resourcefulness: to conquer the world, all you need is a box and your ideas!

Divergent thinking is the single most studied aspect of creativity. it’s when you think of many possible solutions for a single problem, or come up with many ideas of what you can do with a single tool. Divergent thinking pushes us to think beyond the “obvious” ideas that first come to our minds and start thinking of more unique, innovative, and in some cases groundbreaking ideas.

Grab a piece of paper and draw 30 circles on it. Now, give yourself 3 minutes and transform as many circles as you can into recognizable objects.

How many circles were you able to transform within the span of 3 minutes? Did you come up with diverse ideas? Did you turn all circles into emoji faces or did you come up with 30 unique ideas like toys, planets, robots, cars, animals, plants, food items, fruits, cookies, wearables, logos, and more? Did you “break” any rules? Once, a child connected all the circles together and drew a giant caterpillar! She was done transforming all 30 circles in less than a minute!

Play 30 circle game with your family, friends, and kids. See whose thinking is more fluent and whose is more diverse. Try playing the game while giving yourself some context to think within. For example, challenge yourself to transform all circles into animals, or things you can find around your house, things that can make you happy, things that can save our planet, things that you can find in space, or things that bring you comfort. Try the same game by combining themes, related or unrelated. For example, challenge yourself to turn as many circles into animals in a city, or a unicorn world in space!

“Not a Box” is a book written for younger kids, but its message is ironically even more important for adults. At GIANT we have incorporated the book into many of our programs from our Young Mathematician, Scientist, and Makers series to Love Your Planet, DIY Fashion and Spa, Hacking Smart Robots, Creative Tech, Architecture, Music Production, Think Like an Inventor, and so many more. We have even incorporated the book into our instructors training, and as soon as we find ourselves short of a tool or a material, we joke “It’s not a box” and encourage ourselves to think like a maker and make it work with the tools we have in hand - even if all we have is a single craft box!

Here is a sample of more than 30 projects we have made with a single craft box of 9x4.5x4.5 inch. We invite you to do the same with your kids, your students, or on your own! Send us photos of your ideas too, we love to see them and get inspirations.