August 09 Book of the Month

Introducing Planet Silas’ August 09 Book of the Month:

Richard Scarry's Cars and trucks from A to Z by Richard Scarry.

Silly, imaginative, and fun, this book includes fanciful vehicles from Apple car to Zippermobile, as imagined by the children’s book author popular during my own childhood, Richard Scarry. I adored Scarry’s books as a kid, but when I first read this book to Silas (largely out of sentiment), I never imagined that my love would be passed down to the next generation with such gusto.

This book launched so many interests for Silas. It was his first book focusing on vehicles, for instance. To this day, he still refers to bulldozers and diggers as “bugdozers,” because of this book. It also marked the start of his love of Busytown, which is the name of the fictional town depicted in many of Scarry’s books. He is studious in his approach to Busytown books, staring at a single page for long long minutes and talking over its many details. He refers to his play rug featuring a road and town scene as “Busytown” and even this featured book, which only mentioned Busytown in passing, is called “the Busytown book.”

We have read this book so many times that, similarly to last months, BOTM, Boats, Silas has this one pretty much memorized. “Watch out for the lemon car!” he’ll proclaim when we get to the “L” page. “Toothpaste car…teeny tiny tractor!” …and so on. Fun, fun fun!