Listen and read-along with this fun story by, Linda Rae Apolzon.

My sister and I stood at the window looking at our brother Chris. He was leaning against his car, frowning. He wanted to go to the skateboard park, but instead he had to babysit Emily and me.

Emily said, “Maybe he’ll play a board game with us.”

I just looked at her. “No. He won’t. Remember what he did last time?”

Emily groaned. “He made us clean his room.”

I remembered crawling under his bed to get his socks. They were stinky and disgusting. Emily said, “He sure looks mad.”

“We better cheer him up.”

We thought hard. Then we both said, “The box!”

We ran outside and dragged the box out of the garage.

“Do you want to play with the box with us?” Emily asked Chris

Chris scowled. “No.”

“We pretend stuff,” I said. “Like the box is a cave, and there’s a hurricane coming.” I called to Emily, “Over here! I found a cave!” I made the sound of wind blowing: “WooooI”

Emily bent over and kept almost falling because the hurricane was blowing her. “I can’t make it! The wind–too much wind!”
I went to help her. “Wooooo!” We fought our way through the hurricane to the cave-box. “Made it!” we loudly breathed.

Then Emily said, “Uh-oh. What if an animal lives in this cave?”

I gasped. “Look! In the corner—it’s two bear cubs waking up. If the mother bear finds us here—“

“ROAAAR!” Emily cried.

We screamed and ran out of the cave. We ran to Chris yelling, “Help! Help!”

Chris looked at us. “You two are nuts.”

We laughed.

We pretended the box was a house and pulled out flaps for the front door. Our house got carried away by a tornado and landed in a magical land. Then we were Scrunchkins and sang squeaky songs for Chris.

Chris tried to look serious, but we got him to smile.

We turned the box upside down over us. We told scary stories in the dark, loud enough for Chris to hear. After a while we got hungry and came out. Chris was sitting on the car bumper. He didn’t look happy, but at least his eyebrows weren’t scrunched down any more.

We all went inside and made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It started raining hard with lightning and thunder.

Emily said, “Chris, can you make cocoa?”

Chris boiled water, and we got out the cocoa stuff. Chris made a cup for himself, too, and sat at the table with us. We told knock-knock jokes.

After a while it stopped raining and the sun came back.

Suddenly I had a terrible thought. “Oh no! The box!”

Emily and I jumped up and hightailed it outside.

The box was wrecked! It lay there all wet and collapsed like something alive that had died. I felt like crying.

Emily sighed. “Good-bye, box.”

Chris joined us. “Hey, that’s not a flat box. It’s a raft!” He stepped onto it. He snatched up a branch and used it like an oar.

“Come on!”

Emily and I perked up and stepped onto the box-raft.

“You two keep an eye out for alligators!” Chris cried. “We’ll all have to look sharp if we want to make it out of the Florida Everglades alive!”

THE END

About the Author

Linda Rae Apolzon has been writing stories and poems for as long as she can remember. After she became a mother she had fun reading books to her children and began writing them herself. She published two First Little Golden Books: Max Helps Out and I’ll Share With You, early reader The Day David Wasn’t There, and stories and poems in Highlights, Spider, and other children’s magazines. She lives in Chicago with her husband and little dog Olli. She has a website at www.LindaRaeApolzon.com