My Annual Happy Birthday Post for Richard Scarry (But who's counting?)

I've posted Birthday Blogs to honor Richard Scarry (June 5, 1919 - April 30, 1994) several times, but I've got to do it again because really - who's counting??

Find a vintage copy here, on Etsy!

Scarry once said, “I’m not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten. I am very happy when people write that they have worn out my books, or that they are held together by Scotch tape. I consider that the ultimate compliment.”

Well, hats off to you, Mr. Scarry, because that is definitely the case around my house.  (You can read about my taped-up childhood copy of Scarry's Busy, Busy, World here.)  

Lately my two-and-a-half year old grandson can't get enough of Scarry's Best Counting Book Ever.   We've lost count of how many times we've read it!!!

My grandson actually dialogs with the story's main character, "Willy Bunny", who - at the suggestion of Father Bunny - walks through the book counting everything that comes across his path.

As a child, what I remember loving most about Richard Scarry's books was all the detail and things going on with all those animals characters!

These days, I read it to my grandson before his nap, and sometimes he wakes up asking for it again! It's really gotten him into counting all his favorite things - planes, buses, ships, bunnies, mice...

When we're done reading, we close the book and say "good-by" to everything on the back cover: Willy Bunny and the mice in the plane, the owl and little bugs in the tree, and the other animals marching along with Willy (my grandson is actually watching me type this right now, looking at this photo, and asking, "Willy Bunny, what're you doing??"  and "That Willy, Grandma.  Willy Bunny." It just melts my heart.  Thanks, Richard Scarry. sniff.)