A Scarry Kind of Genius

Toddlers love books!! Shouldn't we all say that about ourselves? I do believe so. Yet, toddlers (my Rylee included), love to be read to. They enjoy talking about the pictures in the books, sounding out the animal names, etc. When Rylee was born a good friend of the family gave us a large picture book by Richard Scarry. Many of you know Richard Scarry through the anthropomorphic animals riding in silly cars and doing things that normal humans doing (except that one scene where a group of pigs go out looking for some ham). Anyway, I cannot help but love his books also. His book entitled, Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks form A to Z is a piece of sheer wonder! In this title, all of the animals are riding in cars that best relate to their character and their overall stereotypes. My favorite is the bananamobile. Can you picture a gray bearded monkey in a red baseball cap riding in a banana shaped mobile while eating a banana and tossing the peel casually to the side. Ingenious! This illustration reminds me of those banana shaped bicycle seats kids would ride (I stayed away from those seats with all my power due to the fear of being racked on a sudden stop). Anyway, if I ever saw a monkey riding a bananamobile I would probably keel over laughing, Another car that is fascinating in the book is the toothpaste car. Of course, a little mouse is driving this one (everyone knows that mice and toothpaste go together, go figure?). I have the image of a car not being able to slow down and slamming into the toothpaste car in which the result is a smattering of toothpaste coming out onto the closest nearby car. These kind of weird exchanges are absolutely hilarious!