So the other morning I woke up to find Eli at the dining room table hacking away at The Complete Works of William Shakespeare with a razorblade. I think I passed out.

Around the time I got up off the floor, he’d abandoned the Shakespeare (“these pages are too old”) and moved on to The New Modern American and British Poetry.

He wasn’t being destructive though. He was following the instructions in Unbored to make a secret book box.

Unbored is amazing. You should get it. Really. Someone is always reading it here. It’s a huge, huge book, with about a million interesting things to read and do. Like, you know, cut up a book to make it into a secret box.

This project was also definitely inspired by Mac Barnett’s Brixton Brothers series, which we listened to on a recent roadtrip (narrated by Arte Johnson!) (um, the book is narrated by Arte Johnson, not our roadtrip, although that would’ve been fun too). The main character Steve Brixton, who is obsessed with a Hardy-Boys-esque series called the Bailey Brothers, makes a secret book box and keeps it under his mattress. I highly recommend the Brixton Brothers series too; it’s hilarious and suspenseful.

And so that is what led Eli to attack an old book with a razorblade and a bowl full of glue. Weirdly, this ended up being a hands-off activity for the grownups. Not sure if that’s related to Eli’s razor skills or the ease of the project. But he’s very happy with the results. So far he seems to be keeping cash and Lego minifigures inside — his most treasured possessions.