Customer Reviews

The Busy, Busy World of Richard Scarry

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Having grown up with Richard Scarry's books, I naturally wanted to find out more about him. The book gives a well detailed background to his beginnings and some interesting vignettes. However, I wished there were more information on how he had developed his characters, in particular Huckle Cat and Lowly Worm. Did you know that Huckle Cat started out as a bear? I had a hard time explaining this to my daughter. Wished the book had explained this. But, nonetheless, for those who grew up with him, it is well worth the buy.

This is an amusing book written by a good friend of the original Richard Scarry. It's intended for adults and does a nice job of showing Scarry's mischievous wit and his optimistic life-is-an-adventure attitude. It's hard not to get caught up in the way he simply, happily lives life on his own terms. The book is also useful for anyone trying to figure out which Richard Scarry books were written by the original Richard Scarry, since now there are scores of books put together by his son, who also goes by "Richard Scarry" and seems to copy and trace much of his father's work but leaves out all the mischief, all the wit, and all those lovely backgrounds of Connecticut farms and European cities...

As far as I can tell the real Richard Scarry books still available are: Best Wordbook Ever, Storybook Dictionary, Funniest Storybook Ever, What Do People Do All Day, and Cars and Trucks and Things That Go... Busy, Busy, World is available used for a small fortune. There are undoubtedly others--I think anything originally written before about 1975 is the real thing.

This is a professional-type biography intended for adults. There are many pages excerpted from Scarry's books, used to illustrate the texts, and there are lots of his drawings to just "cute-ify" the pages. It is not for kids, and it is not a personal-type biography. It was written by Scarry's editors/directors, who were also friends, at Golden Books and Random House, respectively; so you get an idea of his personality and of his career trajectory, but it does not go in-depth into anything, especially not his personal relationships.

One thing I have noticed about Richard Scarry books is how there are multiple versions of so many of them. The book clearly explains how he left Golden for Random House, so with control of whatever Scarry had done for them, Golden set about trying to keep making money off him after he had left by re-sizing, re-compiling, and re-hashing things he had already done.

Anyone who loves Richard Scarry books and likes to read "behind-the-scenes" accounts would enjoy this book.

Although the book is chock-full of beautiful Scarry artwork, the text is dry and not very kid-friendly.