Writing for Children…. has become a challenge

Writing for Children is an increasingly intrusive visual world has become a challenge. And soothsayers in the entertainment industry predict more video vis-à-vis the written word in the decades to come. So perhaps the themes of childhood, rites of passage, friendship between child, and beast, aliens, fantastical creatures, and spirits-have to be handled differently, particularly with a post Harry Potter generation of young readers in mind.

It is here that Richard Scarry comes in. Scarry revealed to children the secrets of everyday life. His worlds were easily understood, populated by polite, well-mannered animals with a keen eye for absurd human behavior. His characters are almost always animals portrayed in human activities, and wearing human clothes. His most famous series of books was about Busytown. Using animals in place of humans allowed Scarry to avoid giving the characters specific racial or ethnic traits, which may have helped broaden their appeal. Fun seems to be the key to Scarry's works. Not only should the work be fun for the author and the child, but "It is also more fun for the parent, teacher, or babysitter, who has to read and reread these books over and over. I try to put as much fun and action as possible into each book so that the reader may find something new each time it is read."said Scarry himself.With sparse text, his stories are a visual experience.

In 1963 Scarry made his breakthrough with Best World Book Ever.
The large-format book, with more than 1 400 objects identified with labels, sold seven million copies in twelve years. My son grew up with it. The book was larger than him and he used to sit on top of the book to peer on to the animal characters and learn different words related to activities.

Scarry himself bumbled his way through a charmed life of good luck and fortunate circumstance, pretty much doing whatever he liked until the day he died. He wrote and illustrated over three hundred major picture books for children, each one dense with slapstick and visual humor. More than three hundred million copies of his work have exchanged hands, some of which were translated into thirty languages. This qualifies him to be the most popular children's book author of all time.

It can be argued there are two types of people: those who grew up reading Richard Scarry, and those who remain perpetually maladjusted to society.