The review
Another well-known children's author is late American author and illustrator Richard Scarry. I grew up with his books and his book, "What do people do all day?" was particularly memorable for me. But that's a more advanced book for another time, today's review is for a book that's also set in the fictional Busytown.
We received this book as a hand-me-down from one of my aunts, and I'm glad to say that the entertaining zaniness of the books continue. Here you can see the different Busytown residents going about their daily activities, from putting out fires, delivering letters, untangling traffic jams of epic proportions, and much much more.
His books are colorfully designed and lots of fun to read and re-read. At times, the text will also prompt questions about certain characters such as asking if Hilda the Hippo has forgotten something.
Like any long-running series, you'll also get to observe the occurrence of familiar characters in multiple books, the most famous being Lowly Worm (often found in his apple car), Huckle the Cat, and the all-time mischievous Bananas Gorilla.
Richard Scarry's books have come under fire for stereotypes across gender, race and ethnicity. As such, many of his books have been quietly updated through the years. The book's characters have predominantly male characters taking on working roles, which may be quite stark for our modern times. It's worth remembering that a lot of his books were written in the 1950s, which was a very different era!
Rather than completely remove the books from Foolet's library, I would add in my own narrative such as "mummy and daddy can also be police officers" etc. I believe that these are teachable moments and at some point we won't be able to control the books they read anyway, so why not share with them insights that can shape their world view?