caravan70's Full Review: Richard Scarry - Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks ...
[Updated May 16, 2009 to remove a disclaimer - thanks to sleeper54, I am now aware that there is a separate category for this wonderfully essential Richard Scarry book!]
This review is part of a children's book write-off. The following writers, excellent all, are participating as well:
The world seemed infinite when I was a child. If Tennyson's Ulysses aimed "to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths/Of all the western stars," I wanted to go just a bit further. Growing up in Hawaii in the Seventies, roads were for me the ultimate symbol of adventure. I'd spend hours poring over maps, plotting potential trips - big loops that would take me to as many interesting places as possible. The allure, though, wasn't really the places themselves, but the travel, the movement. Roads meant freedom.
I'm sure that part of my fascination stemmed from the fact that you really can't go too far on the island of Oahu. It's roughly 40 miles north to south, and 30 west to east, so opportunities to wander are necessarily limited. Trips to California were eye-opening… there were the wide spaces of the Central Valley, seemingly endless in expanse.
But credit has to be given as well to Richard Scarry's marvelous Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, which I received as a gift when I was four. If highways were fascinating, so too were the myriad vehicles that crawled upon them. They came in every variety: Datsuns, Cadillacs, Mack trucks, cement mixers, ad infinitum. And the places they came from! Granted, most bore Hawaii plates, but given the large military presence in the Islands you'd see tags from places that seemed unimaginably distant to me. They evoked images from my reading… A Kansas or an Oklahoma plate might remind me of tall wheat swaying, while a Massachusetts plate might cause me to faintly hear the drums of Lexington and Concord. Cars and Trucks and Things That Go was in large part responsible for this later fascination.
The story follows the adventures of Ma, Pa, Pickles and Penny Pig as they drive to a picnic at the beach. During their journey they encounter every conceivable type of transport device and a number of colorful characters. Ordering supplies to be delivered to their home while they're away, they're surrounded by a soda pop truck driven by a large brown dog, a roadster driven by a very elegant lady fox, and Dingo Dog, who's being chased by Officer Flossy - an orange cat on a bicycle - as he knocks over parking meters with his small red sports car. Driving by a construction site, they see ditch-diggers, excavators, water pipe carriers, all operated by colorful cartoon animals. At the beach, there's ships - freighters, barges, tugboats; and on the way back, as a snowstorm suddenly hits, there's snow blowers, plows, snowmobiles and even a skier. Through it all there's the character of Goldbug, whom you're challenged to find as he hides in various vehicles.
It's Scarry's wonderfully whimsical illustrations that make this large-format (10 1/2" X 12") book such a pleasure to read. There's a doughnut car shaped like (take a guess); a dentist's automobile with a front end resembling a huge toothy grin; an airport limousine in which a large wild boar occupies the caboose spot… simply a plethora of amusing characters and contraptions, and a maelstrom of activity. The book rewards a reader endlessly simply because there's so much there: a child could study a single page for a whole afternoon and be fascinated, just as I was. And while Cars and Trucks and Things That Go delights, it also teaches: I found myself recognizing the vehicles Scarry depicts and being able to name them (though I don't think I saw any pickle or carrot cars!) It's not just identification that's taught, either; the situations the Pig family encounters are food for thought as well. In the course of the story we're shown how a road is built, what kinds of activities take place on a farm, how firefighters respond to an emergency, and much more.
This is one of the books that first fostered my love of reading. The most important lesson it taught me is that, simply stated, reading can be fun. Cars and Trucks and Things That Go makes the lessons it imparts delightful, and as such it's a book I returned to over and over. There's a further lesson here: one reading doesn't dispose of a good book; there are treasures to be found in each new perusal. Possession of a volume like this is apt to make a child a reader for life.
Full circle… as I write this final paragraph, I'm looking out of my office window in the headquarters of the California Department of Transportation. Every so often, when I see an orange maintenance truck pull in or I look at the plans for a highway project, Cars and Trucks and Things That Go comes to mind. It's at those moments that I reflect upon the lifelong affair with literature this book began for me, and the roads of the imagination I've traveled because of it… roads that unlike those fashioned from asphalt or macadam are the only highways that are truly infinite.
Animals - Pigs Juvenile / Children's Fiction - On their way to the beach for a picnic the Pig family encounters almost every kind of transportation ve...More at Barnes and Noble
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