Richard Scarry Collection: Archive.org

I loved Richard Scarry as a kid, and my daughter is now old enough to follow me in that love. I had no idea there was anything beyond books. She's not in that phase anymore, but for about a month, Richard Scarry's big book of words was the only bedtime book she wanted me to read her.

The biggest impact on me, though, is how I think about jobs. "Richard Scarry" jobs seems more _real_ to me than what I do. Often, when I'm sitting in a meeting that seems to drone or at the end of the day when I'm not sure if I've done anything of worth, I dream of Busytown and what job I could slide in to from there.

We received one of Richard Scarry's books from Dolly Parton's Imagination Library and I had this wild memory come flooding back of reading them as a kid. Really weird experience to have an extremely old memory like that come out of nowhere.

If you're in the US and have young children, or are expecting, check out the Imagination Library - its awesome. They send you an age appropriate book once a month, for free. Further solidifying that Dolly Parton is a nation treasure.

https://imaginationlibrary.com/

There's Busytown board game that's pretty fun to play with young children: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/64220/richard-scarrys-bu....

It is very distinctive, with a huge 6 foot long game board. Plus, it's totally cooperative: everyone wins or loses together depending on if they can _all_ get to the ferry and make it to a picnic before Pig-Will and Pig-Won't eat all the food.

Our well-thumbed and torn cars book was a favorite of my brother's and mine. Half the pickle truck is missing and my kids speculate what other vehicles might have been on the missing page. There's no lesson here other than, I think, that when someone creates something good, honest, and with love, then that thing is worthwhile and praiseworthy. The love shows in every detail of his books.

At 40, I only found these when reading to our children. Oh, how I would have loved these as a youngster! Everything about RS is filled with smiles. I’m grateful I’m able to “be a kid again” with our small collection.

We’ve purchased almost all copies second hand from: https://www.thriftbooks.com/ and our local used bookstore. Love!

The archives sister project Open Library has nearly 200 Richard Scarry books to digitally "borrow":

https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL35039A/Richard_Scarry?mode...

I had a bunch of Richard Scarry books as a child. As someone who grew up interested in engineering Scarry has these wonderful cut aways and illustrations of all sorts of everyday things.

My favorite is What Do People Do All Day. Cut aways showing pipes and cables underground with labels and colors, blue for water, green for sewage, red with white stripes for electric and blue with white stripes for telephone (might have those backwards). Homes under construction, farming and water wheel grain mill, power generation plant, road construction, even a passenger ship. Those books really stimulated the mind with those little details. And labels! Everything was labeled to tell you what that thing did or was. Some of the characters had little quips; I still remember the electrician in the house construction section standing by the fuse box/main disconnect/meter pan stating "never ever touch!"

The one thing that both infuriates and baffles me is why in gods name did they abridge What Do People Do All Day. The power station and more than I can remember is missing. My original copy was lost or destroyed, can't remember, when I was still young. When my mother went to look for another all she could find was abridged. WTF!

I was recently in Istanbul and I’m always reminded of Scarry when I watch the traffic going over the Bosporus. So many ships, bridges, etc.

I just watched the intro to one of the episodes and the music definitely brought back some memories!

I was left with the feeling that I'd heard the music before in a different context though. It then twigged that it was in another children's TV series, the wonderful Czech cartoon The Mole (Krtek). After a bit of digging I found it was in the Mole and the Rocket (Krtek a raketa) episode. https://youtu.be/LqGqqzTO8MQ?t=213

It turns out that the theme song was composed by Milan Kymlicka, a Czech composer, interesting! And lo and behold, the music for that episode was composed by the same composer! https://en.kinorium.com/390051/episodes/s1e3/

I LOVED these books so much as a kid, and my children also love them now. Gorgeous illustrations and just really fun. I believe they were slightly updated in recent years to add more women into jobs other than housewife/mum!

There is an artist who has a Tumblr featuring characters in the style of Richard Scarry that parodies professions that many on HN would be familiar with.

https://welcometobusinesstown.tumblr.com/

It's one of the best things on the internet.

When I started in my career I was working as an ink and paint artist for a company making these types of games. It was all in macromedia director. We'd put the elements for everything everywhere and so much of the loading was collecting random small files from all over. It's where I made my first real application. This was kind of before flash and the web. I prefer the books now to the games but I loved what we were trying to do. Now the market is flooded with terrible edutainment software. I wish there was something you could see by the quality of illustration anymore and be able to say "hey this is quality" so much of it's trash. I was read I am a bunny as a kid. I now read it to my son.

Are these not still under copyright? Scarry died in 1994.

Two words: Cannibal Pigs.

http://davegilson.com/scarry.html

Does anyone know of a comprehensive list of changes made to his books to update them for more modern audiences? His books were the first I heard of being updated for that reason and I'd like to see what was done, but I can only find news articles listing some changes.

What can beat hunting for lowly worm.

Love this. Great world building. Their educational books are so fun without it being cheesy.

Years ago, pre-Amazon, a friend sent to me a downtown bookstore to pick up a book he ordered. It was a book of folk rhymes, illustrated by Richard Scarry. I only remember one of the rhymes:

When in danger, When in doubt, Run in Circles, Scream and shout!

This morning my child insisted that he was Huckle Cat and I was Grocer Cat. I think he will appreciate this.

There were some great Busytown PC games in the 90s too. The boat screen in particular had a fun song.