Night after night we perused it together. The Best Word Book Ever was a major formative influence in the lives of my sons. His funniest books, favorites of both my sons and my grandchildren, feature the misadventures of Tinker and Tanker. Scarry's pictures are full of crazy impossibilities, dumb accidents, funny faces, and satirical exaggerations. Recognizing that every scene is designed to trigger the child's sense of humor, an imaginative adult can easily turn reading time into a continuous laugh. Ad-libbing is appropriate for any Scarry book.

The natural thing is to start talking about the book, the child asking questions, the adult providing explanations or filling in details or pointing out humorous sidelights.

Yet what might seem like a drawback is really an asset, for his books encourage direct communication between parent and child. In some books, like his Best Word Book Ever, there are only labels for the pictures. In every one of his books the writing is minimal. To open a Richard Scarry book is to submerge yourself in a pleasant atmosphere without equal in children's literature. It is all good fun appealing to the good nature of the reader. Nothing bad happens in the world of Richard Scarry. Evidently, what drove him on was a consuming desire to make people happy.Īnd indeed his books are full of happiness. He himself said that his greatest joy was to receive letters from people telling him that their copies of his books were falling apart from so many readings. What drove him on? He hardly needed more money. Yet for many years after attaining literary stardom, he spent every day from 8 to 4 closed up in a bare room so that he could concentrate on his work. With sales of 300 million worldwide to his credit, he is a towering figure in the world of publishing. No other author of children's books rivals the success of Richard Scarry. It was published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., in 1960. Tinker and Tanker is the first in a series of seven books written and illustrated by Richard Scarry.

Egg in the Hole by Richard Scarry