“Bigger Than a Bread Box,” written by Laurel Snyder, is a young adult novel about a young girl who must move away and finds a magical bread box which doesn’t really help her problems.

In the beginning, the family seemed to be acting as a regular family. Rebecca Shapiro is the twelve-year-old narrator who is sitting at the kitchen table and doing her homework while her little brother Lew is upstairs in his crib in their home in Baltimore. The next second they lose power. Mom is screaming about the unpaid bills and being “sick of it all,” while Dad responds sarcastically.

The story practically skips to Mom frantically packing and shoving her kids in the car while baby Lew is saying “bye Daddy,” as he just thinks they are taking a trip to the store. Dad runs and yells after the car but can’t catch up. Mom is taking them all the way to Atlanta where their Grandma lives until they “figure things out.”

While Rebecca is worried about her new school and new pink room, she wanders into the attic looking for a book or something to do. When she says “I wish I had a book,” she didn’t find out until later that the bread box she finds gives her things she wishes for.

She asks for money, gravy fries from a place back home, a gift for her mother, a jacket to fit in at school and many more things. She also asks for her parents to get back together in every way she can ask, but it obviously doesn’t work.

Lew is feeling homesick, and Rebecca needs to be there for her little brother and starts spending a lot more time with him and starts wishing things for him.

Of course, kids would want a magic bread box, but this came with consequences. Rebecca soon realizes that the magic is stealing from the actual owners, which gets her into trouble and forces her to understand the hardships and complex relationships in her life.