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Writing in Pictures: Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature

2024; Wiley; Volume: 112; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tyr.2024.a936056

1467-9736

Chris Ware,

Themes in Literature Analysis

Writing in PicturesRichard Scarry and the art of children's literature Chris Ware (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution The original cover sketch for Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, which was first published in 1974. [End Page 180] As a boy, I knew I was supposed to like cars and trucks and things that go. But as an unathletic and decidedly unboyish kid, I only got close to liking one car—my mom's blue Volkswagen Ghia, which she used to ferry me to and from school (and, when she needed some time to herself, to her parents'—my grandparents'—house for an overnight visit). In fact, I didn't just like that car, I loved it, so much so that the day it was towed away I secretly chipped a piece of the sky-colored paint from the chassis and tearfully hid it in a little box. I never had the chance to develop such a special relationship with a truck or a bus or an airplane or anything else with a motor or wheels—in fact, such things scared me, and to this day I have never changed a tire. [End Page 181] In my grandparents' second-floor guest room, formerly my mother's childhood room, one bookcase had a row of children's books slumped to the side, offering a chronological core sample of my grandmother's attempts to busy not only her own kids, but all the grandkids who'd stayed there before me. There were the original Oz books, a copy of Ferdinand the Bull, Monro Leaf 's inexplicably compelling yet mildly fascistic Manners Can Be Fun, some 1950s and 1960s Little Golden Books purchased at the Hinky Dinky supermarket down the street, and, among many others I've now long forgotten, the big blue, green, and red shiny square of Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever. The largish (even just plain large if you were smallish when holding it) book offered a visual index of the everyday puzzle pieces of life in humble, colored-in line drawings. Each page was a fresh, funny composition of some new angle on the world, making the book a sort of quotidian picture-map containing everything imaginable and unimaginable a kid might be curious about: where and how people lived, slept, ate, played, and worked. The thing is, "people" weren't anywhere to be seen in Best Word Book Ever. Instead, the whole world was populated by animals: rabbits, bears, pigs, cats, foxes, dogs, raccoons, lions, mice, and more. Somehow, though, that made the book's view of life feel more real and more welcoming. A dollhouse-like cutaway view of a rabbit family in their house getting ready for their day didn't seem to just picture the things themselves—they were the things themselves, exuding a grounded warmth that said, "Yes, everywhere we live in houses and cook together and get dressed, just like you." Mirroring these rabbits, across two pages an index-like series of images depicted a bear named Kenny getting out of bed, getting dressed, and going down for breakfast. This would galvanize me to action: I'd take out the book and mimic Kenny, washing my face with a washcloth (which I never did at my own house), brush my teeth, get dressed, and make my bed. Then I'd head downstairs to the kitchen with the book under my pencil-thin arm, where my grandmother would gamely try to serve me the same breakfast [End Page 182] Kenny was having, emulating as best she could the individual menu items: pancakes, "warm cereal," orange juice, bacon, and toast. A little later in the book, in a two-page spread titled "Mealtime," a family of orange pigs surrounded a large dinner table laid out with plates and bowls of various foods. The lower left corner of the rightmost page cradled a wooden bowl of evenly green lettuce leaves with three tomato wedges. I don't know why, but that drawing so thoroughly captured… something for me that, for years at my grandparents' house, it became my standing side order. While watching television or...