Author Focus: Richard Scarry
ages: 1-5
Cars and Trucks and Things that Go
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The Funniest Storybook Ever
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Little Counting Book
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What do People do All Day?
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If you didn't grow up with Richard Scarry you might not understand the Scarry power. His characters are vivid and true. Situations always go wrong and always resolve themselves somehow. Do the names Lowly worm, Huckle the cat, Sergeant Murphy, Pig Will and Pig Won't ring a bell? They are just some of the wild and crazy characters that make up the Scarry landscape.
Many of Richard Scarry's books often seem like a precursor to Dorling Kindersley photographic books that list and depicts item one after another. The difference being that the pictures are drawn and are often accompanied by an animal. In Cars and Trucks and Things that Go, alongside a station wagon and a breakdown truck is a pumpkin car and a mouse van. You will find a hammer car, a hot dog car and an ant van.
The Counting Book on the other hand has a storyline running through it and makes its way all the way to one hundred. What Do People Do All Day? spans subjects such as ordinary jobs, how is wood made, building roads, fighting fires and visiting hospitals. The subjects are discussed with accuracy, drama, trauma, character development and humour.
But to embrace the real essence of Scarry one must read his Funniest Storybook Ever. Classics such as the tale of the haunted bread, and Uncle Willie and the pirates are terrific. Children love all the adventure and misadventure.
Scarry, writing at the same time as Seuss and equally famous in the States, could not be a more different writer. They both mix fantasy with reality, Scarry nevertheless seems to take his plots from daily life. His animals are just regular folk who often experience the oddness of small town life.
Illustrator Focus: Emily Bolam
The Jumblies by Edward Lear illustrated by Emily Bolam Orchard
ages: 2-6
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The House that Jack Built illustrated by Emily Bolam
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Bearobics illustrated by Emily Bolam
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Creepy Crawly Caterpillar illustrated by Emily Bolam
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Far and few, far and few
Are the lands where the Jumblies live.
Their heads are green and their hands are blue
And they went to sea in a sieve.
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