What Do People Do All Day?
A teacher’s look at why this book belongs in the The Why-Askers stage.
Why it fits The Why-Askers (for preschoolers whose every page sparks a question)
Busytown's workers build houses, deliver mail, and grow food across teeming spreads. It is a preschool economics course conducted by cats in overalls. Answers the eternal 'what does everyone DO?'
What makes it special
Scarry explains the economy — houses built, mail moved, bread baked — with more clarity than most textbooks manage. Busytown's cheerful animal workers turn systems thinking into seek-and-find. For children whose parents 'work on laptops' at jobs they can't see, it makes work visible and concrete again.
From the publisher
INSIDE FRONT COVER is labeled with numeral 2 on the lower left corner. Top of page text reads, "Welcome to Busytown. We all live in Busytown and we are all workers. We work hard so that there will be enough food and…
About Richard Scarry
Richard Scarry (1919–1994) built Busytown, the most densely populated place in children's literature — over 100 million books of cheerful animal workers explaining how the world runs. His specialty was information density a toddler could wander in for an hour.
After art school and Army service, Scarry spent years illustrating other people's Golden Books before an editor let him loose on his own; he moved to Switzerland and drew Busytown from an Alpine studio for the rest of his life, reportedly working with a view of cows.
Also by this author: Cars and Trucks and Things That Go · Busy, Busy Town · What Do People Do All Day?
More from “How the World Works”
This book is part of The Best Books for Preschoolers: 30 Teacher Picks (The Why-Askers) in our guide The Best Children’s Books by Age — 120 books chosen by the Montessori-certified teachers at Creative Minds Montessori in Frisco, TX. Come see how we build readers →
Nobody paid for this review — not the author, not the publisher — and the store link above earns us nothing. Our only interest is the reader this book fits.