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My favorite coloring book from my childhood,
"Richard Scarry's Best Rainy Day Book Ever"
published by Random House and is out of print. |
Richard McClure Scarry (June 5, 1919 – April 30, 1994) was a popular
American children's author and illustrator who published over 300 books
with total sales of over 100 million units worldwide.
Scarry was born in Boston, Massachusetts, where his parents ran a shop.
The Scarry family enjoyed a comfortable life even during the time of
the Great Depression.
Following high school graduation, Scarry enrolled in a business college
but soon dropped out, finding it not to his liking. He then studied at
the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he remained until
being drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. After the war,
Scarry worked for the art departments of various magazines before making
a career breakthrough in 1949 with Little Golden Books.
His Gaelic surname is actually pronounced Ska Ree, originating on the west coast of Ireland,
but because American fans of his books had defaulted to reading it
"scary", this is the version used in popular video and audio renditions
of his books and stories.
Scarry's most famous series of books was about Busytown. Scarry's characters were almost always anthropomorphic animals.
His books were popular with children throughout the world. Over 100
million copies of his books were sold, and they have been translated
into dozens of languages.
While his books are largely populated by common animal species such as
cats, rabbits, rats, domestic pigs, and mice, he proved to be quite
adept at giving human characteristics to a seemingly endless number of
creatures. Beavers, raccoons, tigers, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses,
owls, bears, goats, elephants, foxes, primates, monkeys, chimpanzees,
apes, gorillas, crocodiles, dogs, wolves, anteaters, hyenas, lions,
baboons, chickens, worms, and insects
were just some of the other animals to be featured in Scarry's works.
Many of his later illustrations feature characters in traditional Swiss
clothing and show architecturally correct drawings of half-timber
houses. Examinations of drawings featuring mechanical devices, such as
the rigging on a sailboat or a fighter jet, also show that they were
drawn with accuracy.
In the 1980s and 1990s, many of his Best Ever
series of books were converted into popular animated videos, which are
available on DVD and VHS and also aired at times during TLC's Ready Set
Learn
block between scheduled programs from 1995 to 2003 as some of the
network's Short Stuff breaks. Some of these animated films include Richard Scarry's Best Silly Stories and Songs Videos Ever and The Busiest Firefighters Ever. The Busytown books were also adapted into an animated series, The Busy World of Richard Scarry,
which was produced by CINAR Animation and Paramount Television and ran
on Showtime from 1993 to 1997 and later reran in the late 1990s on
Nickelodeon and Noggin. A further animated series, Busytown Mysteries
was commissioned by CBC Television from the Cookie Jar Group (the
successor to CINAR) in 2007, and airs on the Kids' CBC Block morning
program. Busytown was also featured at the Carnegie Science Center from
June 13 through September 8, 2002 in an interactive exhibit entitled
"Richard Scarry's Busytown."
