Marian called it Roxaboxen. (She always knew the name of everything.) There across the road, it looked like any rocky hill — nothing but sand and rocks, some old wooden boxes, cactus and greasewood and thorny ocotillo — but it was a special place: a sparkling world of jeweled homes, streets edged with the whitest stones, and two ice cream shops. Come with us there, where all you need to gallop fast and free is a long stick and a soaring imagination.

In glowing desert hues, artist Barbara Cooney has caught the magic of Alice McLerran's treasured land of Roxaboxen — a place that really was, and, once you've been there, always is."This treasure of a story is about...a treasured place; a child's imaginary town named Roxaboxen....With a true child's voice, McLerran uses just the right phrase or word to make the town and its residents spring clearly off the page. Cooney's brightly colored illustrations...etch the town and its inhabitants indelibly on the page....This book celebrates how children and their imaginations make fanciful things become magically real and make them last forever. Don't miss it."—School Library Journal.