Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go
I recently stumbled upon a good post posted earlier today, by admin, over on New Tube entitled Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go that I would strongly suggest you all read! Below are some little extracts in order to whet your appetites!
The road is packed with hundreds of cars and trucks, vans and motorcycles, tractors and buses. The Pigs find chaos and adventure on the way to the beach and the opportunity to see vehicles they have never seen before. It’s an exciting day!Amazon.com ReviewAlthough this book was around when many of today’s parents were youngsters, it has remained a steadfast must-have in every toddler’s library. For starters, it’s a great vocabulary guide that names the many things that go (and some that haven’t a prayer of going, but are great fun to imagine anyway). It’s also teeming with detail-rich scenes and characters on every page, teaching children the rewards of looking long and closely (such as finding the hidden “Goldbug” in each spread).
Reading admin’s article got me thinking so I had a quick search around for some other articles on the subject and found some more gems. i.e. this post by admin, posted back in 2005, on a blog called Buy Cheap Books Sale:
Ships from and sold by Amazon. Buy Cheap this Book and FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Buy Cheap Book and get Lowest price : $8.39 Books Description This book is in acceptable condition. The binding is falling apart, however still in tact.
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The corners of the book are worn. The pages are still in tact, and the book is perfectly readible and enjoyible. Shop from thousands of books in our Amazon store. St. Vincent DePaul is a non-profit charity that has a mission to help any person in need.
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Not just vehicles, but scenery and action make each turn of the page a new adventure. While there is a story that goes on through the entire book, you can get lots of enjoyment just by flipping through it and this makes it worthwhile for younger children who don’t have the longest of attention spans. The pictures are clear and bright and help with building vocabulary and recognition. Before “Where’s Waldo,” there was Goldbug. After a while, children will know exactly where he is on each page but having to hunt for him the first several times through adds something else to the charm of Richard Scarry. The downsides are small and not worth worrying about. The pages are big but that means they are easily ripped.
Yet another fantastic post on the subject came from Ben on Ben Towle: Cartoonist, Educator, Hobo posted back in February, entitled Richard Scarry: an Appreciation » Ben Towle: Cartoonist, Educator … which is also certainly worth a read.
So, a few rambling observations: Richard Scarry is a truly amazing character designer. Right about the time I wound up reading Richard Scarry books over and over to my daughter, I started teaching a character design class for the Savannah College of Art and Design. This put me in a mode of hyper-alertness for all things related to character design and as I read these two books over and over I came to really appreciate Scarry as a top-notch character designer. His animal characters actually look like animals. Don’t all animal characters? No, not really. Many of them look like “furries”: a human body with an animal head stuck on top and a tail. Scarry’s characters, while anthropomorphic for sure, definitely retain a lot of their animal trappings, which is why he can pull of such a dizzying array of odd-ball animals–from goats to hyenas and everything in between.
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(The middle image above also exemplifies another thing I love about Scarry’s drawings of Busytown, the fictional town where these characters live: his drawings make it look like there’s a near-constant low-level explosion going on. The whole town is drawn as if it’s going to burst apart at the seams from pure, unbridled excess energy at any moment!) Richard Scarry is a damn good illustrator. Period. Scarry’s not someone whose name immediately comes to mind when one thinks of drawing “chops”… but he’s got ‘em. Click through to the full-size image of this amazing illustration of the goings-on in an ocean liner: This is just a straight-up beautiful cut-away drawing. Every room is packed with fun, interesting stuff and he’s done great technical drawings of things like the pistons and crankshaft cams, valves, air intake/exhaust, etc.
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Richard Scarry has a great sense of action and timing. Scott McCloud be damned; you don’t need sequential drawings to depict the passing of time comics-style. Look at the amazing sequence of events that Scarry masterfully shows here in this single image: Left to right, just like reading words on a page, Rudolph Strudel crashes his plane… which makes the food fly out of the salad bowl… both of which send the female bear bursting off to the left… which prompts the male bear to run in, clearly moving left-to-right. These old Scarry books are sometimes hilariously non-P.C. For the time they were written, I actually think these books are fairly progressive, but you definitely catch some things that make you double-take occasionally. My favorite character, for example, is this guy, “Wild Bill Hiccup”: I can’t really articulate it exactly, but I’m pretty sure in a modern children’s book you couldn’t have a character named Wild Bill Hiccup who’s a raccoon dressed like a native American and who rides around terrorizing the town in his “Buffalomobile.” All of the flight attendants are “stewardesses.” All the doctors are men, all the teachers are women, and in stories about families the dad goes off to work every day and leaves mom home with the kids.