Richard Scarry was an artist from the start. Born in 1919
to a middle-class family, he didn’t have the financial struggles that many
others faced. He was able to attend school, enjoy free time, and buy art
supplies. But having financial comfort did not eliminate challenges from his
life. Scarry hated school. He became a troublemaker, forged absence notes and
earned dismal grades. He was active all the time, pausing only when his art
absorbed his mind and body.
His father, a successful business man, hoped that Scarry
would attend an Ivy League college and eventually follow in his footsteps.
Without the scholastic strength or intrinsic desire to go a school of such
intensity, Scarry spent a year at a Boston business school. No happier there
than he had been in primary and high school, he transferred to the Boston
Museum School of Fine Arts. Finally able to focus on developing his artistic
talents, Scarry found joy. In 1942, one year shy of graduation, however, he was
drafted into the American forces, effectively ending his formal art education.
When the army asked his profession, Scarry professed
himself an artist. It seemed to make no difference, though, as he was sent to
radio repair school. His dismay was evident. “He failed the exam miserably…
earning the unheard-of lowest score in the history of the class: minus
thirteen” (Richard Scarry, n.d.). His commanding officer realized that allowing
Scarry to repair radios would be a disaster in the making, so he reassigned him
to a much more palatable position: artist. His position quickly grew and he
became the “military’s ‘art director’” (Richard Scarry, n.d.), in charge of
designing propaganda and support messages, as well as disseminating news
updates.
Scarry loved the position and his ensuing role as “editor
and writer of Publications for the Information and Morale Services Section of
the Allied Force Headquarters” (Richard Scarry, n.d.). He was not only able to
utilize his creativity, but was given the opportunity to travel around the
world. Professional circumstances could not have been better for a man who
thrived on movement and activity.
With such experience under his belt, Scarry had no
problem finding illustration jobs after the war—with Little Golden Books.
Scarry’s portfolio, filled with “cartoonish human characters” capture the
imaginations of executives at Little Golden Books and in 1948, they offered him
a very lucrative, one year contract for $4800 (Richard Scarry, n.d.). Over the
next decade, his characters evolved into the zany, hard-working, madcap, often
accident-prone residents of the halcyon town of Busytown that would catapult
him into children’s literature history.
But Scarry’s characters were only
part of his grand success. Because of a possible learning disorder
that made standard learning practices
unmanageable, Scarry developed an insight into how children might better learn.
The rigidity of teaching practices in the 1930’s prevented Scarry from learning
in the manner best suited to his needs and as result, his entire early
education was nothing but torturous. Despite this, Scarry recognized the
extreme importance of education and as an illustrator, wanted to present
information to children in a world of humor, pathos, color, brevity, and
movement (Richard Scarry, n.d.). He wanted to meet young children where they
are at, make education fun and approachable and entertaining. His goal was to
“be funny without being stupid. Don’t do it in a way they’ve seen a million
times before. And whatever the cost, don’t be boring” (Richard Scarry, n.d.).
Scarry didn’t allow standard
publishing formats to curtail his creativity. Standardization (both in
education and the military) hadn’t worked for him in the past, so he looked to
create his illustrations with innovative and inventive techniques. In fact, his
brother, Jack Scarry, said, “[Scarry] didn’t care that he didn’t conform”
(Scarry Good, 1994). He dreamed of creating “a new kind of dictionary which
arranged words by categories instead of the alphabet” (Richard Scarry, n.d.) and
wrote many of his narratives without plots so that readers could use their
imaginations, making up their own plots, creating their own scenes for dramatic
play, starting conversations with family and feel comfortable imagining the
ridiculous. Because he didn’t tie himself to a single plot in each book, he
could extend the illustrated narrative into as much detail as he desired.
Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever, the first of his themed dictionaries,
included over 1400 “solo panels of slapstick anthropomorphic behavior [and]
lots of new characters” (Richard Scarry, n.d.). Each panel is filled with
movement, zany adventures and slapstick humor. Scarry meticulously designed
each character and scene to capture imagination, filling pages with countless
details. He wanted his young readers to find something new to learn, something
different to enjoy each and every time they looked at a page. “Children learn
from a story and they grow attached to it,” said Scarry. “That’s why the
usually want it read to them night after night” (Richard Scarry, 2012).
While young children continued to
adore his books and illustrations, a simmering backlash erupted around 1970.
Society started pinpointing Scarry’s illustrations as sexist and racially
stereotyped. “Feminists accused him of being a misogynist because his female
characters wore dresses and were mainly housewives” (Avignon, 2012). Given the society in which he was raised, in
which women’s roles were very much relegated to the home, the fact Scarry put
dresses on the animal cooking dinner was culturally accurate. He stated on
several occasions that all his characters are animals with no particular
gender, so a truck driver wearing trousers and a shirt could very well be
female (Lynch, 1998). “Most of the women characters dressed just like men anyway”, he
maintained. (Richard Scarry, n.d.) The irony wasn’t lost on him, as he also
“pointed out that the feminist movement itself thought men and women should
dress in the same manner” (Avignon, 2012).
Scarry’s frustration heightened when Busy, Busy World was called out by
critics called insisting that Scarry’s “caricatures of different ethnicities
across the world were racist” (Avignon, 2012). A feather-sporting “Indian” in a
canoe and a head-dress wearing “Indian” representing the letter “I” were deemed
stereotypical because not all Indians wear feathers or sail canoes. Likewise,
“Ah-Choo the near-sighted panda bear from Hong Kong… and Angus the Scottish
bagpiper” were targeted for perpetuating stereotypes (Richard Scarry, n.d.).
Scarry was incensed by these
accusations. He created these characters with no intention of being chauvinist
or racially insensitive, but was merely illustrating prevailing American
culture. He didn’t mean to imply to children that women could not work outside
the home or to demoralize the female gender. He worked with countless women in the publishing
profession, including collaborating with his wife, Patsy, on several occasions. Patsy even supported the two of them for a while, so Scarry was well aware of the significance of women in the workplace (Little, 2013). According to Dallas DiLeo, head librarian of the Children’s
Department at Carnegie Library in 2002 when he spoke about Richard Scarry at
the Carnegie Science Center, “[Scarry] was showing a very 50’s type of life.
The moms were in dresses, and the construction workers were always men. In the
early 70’s people were stomping their feet and making a big to-do over this.
Parents were saying, ‘How will we change the world if the lady cats are always
in dresses?’” (Matthews, 2015).
Scarry’s goal had been to educate children with
images of a society they could relate to and this backlash helped him
recognized that in order to sell books, in order to reach his audience, in
order to give children new and innovative ways in which to learn, he would have
update his characters, their dress, their professions and their Busy World
society. Women, ironically, were the primary caretakers of his intended
audience and in order to keep them buying his books for their children, he
would have to bend to their pressure. It wasn’t about the profit for Scarry; it
was about the children. He once said that it is “‘a precious thing to be
communicating to children, helping them discover the gift of language and thought.
I’m happy to be doing it’” (Richard Scarry, 2010).
No comments:
Post a Comment