Dads on Books

Music 0:01
(Music)

Okay, so intro intro intro... Dads on Books, we love books, our girls love books, we love our girls books... And... Books.

David 0:12
We are Dad's on Books.

Mike 0:14
We are two

David 0:15
and two. (Laughs)

Mike 0:16
Because we are two of us, and we read two different copies of the same book.

David 0:22
Sometimes digital, sometimes analog, sometimes both.

Mike 0:25
Sometimes the same book.

David 0:27
(Laughs)

Mike 0:28
Today, we are reading a book that David chose, and I kind of put that out there, because David gave me the title of the book. Which is, Richard Scarry's, "Cars and Trucks, and Things That Go."

David 0:46
I'm glad to hear that, because I just open to the cover of my book, and it's the exact same words.

Mike 0:53
That is phenomenal.

David 0:55
(Laughs)

Mike 0:56
Except

David 0:58
I was smelling a butt, as in "BUT", as in "BUT" as in "However", Sorry.

Mike 1:03
Absolutely. I went and looked up this book online, found it on Amazon. I could not get the physical copy in time to read it before recording here. So, I thought, well, that's fine. I'll just buy the digital copy, which would be great, except that I settled on the digital copy, called Richard Scarry's, "Cars and Trucks." I didn't realize when I bought it, that it was not "Cars and Trucks" and "Things That Go." So, we actually, this time, have read different stories.

David 1:39
Wow, okay. Only five episodes in didn't take us to get there. That's great. (Laughs)

Mike 1:45
I think that the important things here are pay attention to the whole idol of the book.

David 1:52
Yes?

Mike 1:53
Because, who would have thought that Richard Scarry's had written books about "Cars and Trucks" and "Cars and Trucks" and "Things That Go?" And, there's other ones too. There were "Cars and Trucks" or "Cars, Trucks"

Music 2:07
"Things

Mike 2:07
and That" Yeah, it's very confusing. So, if you're an author, don't name your books the same as the 110 years ago or something.

David 2:17
(Laughs)

Well, generations of children have spent hours pouring over his books, which number over 100.

Mike 2:25
Yeah.

David 2:26
So, we're realizing that just changing some names and who knows if the books are actually different.

Mike 2:31
In this case, I do know, because I actually went back and looked, because I was like, this sounds different than what was described in one of the things that I read. So, that's how I discovered that there are so many. And, actually, looking online at Mr. Richard McClure Scarry, he has published over 300 books.

David 2:55
Wow.

Mike 2:56
Again, those could have all been different versions of "Cars and Trucks." Yes. "Cars and Trucks" and "Things That Go" planes and trains and automagos.

David 3:06
(Laughs) Plains and trains that don't go, boats that on the river flow and other fun things.

Mike 3:11
Absolutely.

David 3:11
Wow.

Mike 3:11
That's our book. And that's what I know.

David 3:13
That's our books. (Laughs)

Mike 3:15
Throughout that.

David 3:16
Well, here's the good news for those of you who are not familiar yet with Richard Scarry. I've not read all of his hundreds of books, but I do know that very few of them are plot driven. So, if we are to choose a book or books that we are to not be on the same page on, we pick the right author.

Mike 3:35
Yeah.

David 3:36
Most of our talking will be about his art and his style and his sense of humor, which I think you've probably discovered. And that should be enough for Richard Scarry. For those of you who don't know him, to go discover him, for those of you who do, to quote the famous philosopher, "Journey, you get the joy of rediscovering him." Anyway. You can fix that later.

Mike 3:56
Oh no, that's going in.

David 3:58
Oh no!

Mike 3:59
On the other podcast that I work on. Journey is a recurring theme as well. So why wouldn't it be here?

David 4:07
Exactly.

Mike 4:08
So thank you Andy and Kelly from the HigherEdJobs podcast, which is the other podcast that I work on. Specifically, we have a playlist podcast that talks about a playlist that they put together and we all put songs on it. So that's kind of where the journey comes from.

David 4:26
Pun intended.

I actually, I do listen to HigherEdJobs Jobs podcast. Y'all should definitely listen to that. It's really amazing because a lot of it, I'm not a teacher, I am a teacher, but definitely not HigherEdJobs. I teach a seventh grade public speaking improv elective. But there's a lot of great stuff in that podcast that's relevant to anyone who's job searching or employed, but I listen to the soundtrack episode, that's really cool, because picking music can be a lot of fun.

Mike 4:53
It sure can't. So one day, I think we should probably start branching out and have some spin-off shows. And we should talk about Kids Music at some point too.

David 5:03
Oh, yeah.

Mike 5:04
Maybe we'll have our own playlist episodes and put our own little playlist together on Spotify. Who knows?

David 5:11
Stay tuned! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! It's awesome. Okay, not for the first time, and probably not for the last time. Shall we say, quote, "Let's get back to Richard Scarry"? Yes, let's. Okay, Richard Scarry is an author. I read many of his books as a kid, and I have read them to and with my girls. But Mike, I want to hear your impression of him, having never even really heard of him before I mentioned him last time.

Mike 5:39
So, my take on him, I went to Wikipedia, because you know that's the source for all things that are totally true on the internet.

David 5:48
Absolutely specific and accurate, yes.

Mike 5:50
Absolutely.

David 5:51
Totes.

Mike 5:52
I do like Wikipedia, because sometimes you find crazy things. But this time, I went and found Richard Scarry. I scare you with two Rs.

David 6:00
Yes.

Mike 6:01
And funnily enough, one of the very, very, very first things that I noticed had nothing to do with his writing.

David 6:09
Huh.

Mike 6:10
So, this will take us back three whole episodes, because Richard Scarry died in Switzerland, in Gstaad.

David 6:24
No way!

Mike 6:26
That's what it says on Wikipedia.

David 6:28
Then it must be

Mike 6:29
true. It must be true.

David 6:30
I don't know if you noticed if you were watching. When you said three episodes ago, I was like, "Getting Tree Was First." I didn't remember what that episode was, until you said, "Gstaad." "Gstaad?" Wow. I'd like to think that we planned that, but we had no idea.

Mike 6:48
No idea. That's why I really wanted to bring it up, because it was so funny how coincidental all of these things are. Or was it coincidental?

David 6:58
Who knows?

Mike 6:59
He did Ian right?

David 7:02
Yeah, Ian Falconer.

Mike 7:03
Yes. Maybe he chose Gstaad because he remembered it from Richard Scarry. Who knows?

David 7:08
Back to Ian for a second. Sometimes things were funny just because of the way they sound. And if you're going to pick a funny ski place, Gstaad. It's a funny ski place and it's a great word for a parent to try to say to their child in reading to them, and quite positive that was not outside of Ian's mind when he chose Gstaad.

Mike 7:28
Absolutely.

David 7:30
Absolutely. Anyway, so let's get back to Richard Scarry and tell me anything else on research, you're going to get into the actual books now.

Mike 7:37
I think just the books. I mean, he had a whole life, he was old when he died.

David 7:42
He was 74. He was young when he was born?

Mike 7:45
Exactly.

Speaking of young and old, all of the artwork seemed old because it's all cars and trucks, at least the book that I was reading, especially the book I was reading, was all cars from the 50s.

David 8:04
Oh, of course.

Mike 8:05
So now we're in 2025 and all of those cars are-

David 8:12
They're dated.

Mike 8:13
Old, very dated, so

David 8:14
Yeah.

Mike 8:15
kind of fun to see them. I was just looking at them going, oh my gosh, that's cool. There's actually a milk truck.

David 8:22
I think that's going to be one of the many things that for our younger listeners, they're going to go, what's that?

Mike 8:30
Exactly.

David 8:31
What's a milk truck? Okay, looking at my book, Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, was published in 1974, which is funny because a lot of the things in it are dated beyond that. Some of them are pretty clear, there's a thing called an old time buggy, and that was old even then. And in 1974, I mean, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, those are these weird companies in Japan that no one had barely ever heard of.

Mike 8:54
Yeah.

David 8:55
So yeah, I like that it's dated. See, that didn't occur to me. I did not look at this and go, wow, it's dated because my visual memory of these pages is so etched in my brain, and I've also read them with my kids a lot recently, which we'll get to in a second, and just, I didn't notice that.

Mike 9:10
That's fair. I just went and looked at the copyright on the book. I was reading, and that copyright is 1951. So hence,

David 9:19
what?

Mike 9:20
Fifty's Cars.

David 9:21
Wow. Totally make sense. That's crazy.

Mike 9:26
I'm gonna say on mine, it's funny. There is really no story to it's all just cars and trucks and people who are driving them were talking about them, but one of the funny things because it is from so long ago.

David 9:43
There's a--

Mike 9:44
page where the grocery man and his helper carry out the packages, and it shows a mom giving her young child crackers or something. The child is probably under two and seems to be laying in the front seat.

David 10:04
That is a little bit dated.

Mike 10:06
A little bit.

David 10:08
Wow! Just

Mike 10:09
cracked me up. I was like, oh my gosh, that's different.

David 10:12
That is hilarious.

Mike 10:13
So tell me about your book

David 10:15
though? Because

Mike 10:16
mine has no plot and lots of vehicles.

David 10:19
So mine has a little bit more of a plot. It looks like it took him about, I don't know, 23 years to say, "hey, maybe I should do a plot for these kids."

Mike 10:28
Maybe.

David 10:29
Maybe. Mine is, I mean, first of all, does yours have page numbers?

Mike 10:35
No.

David 10:35
Mine does. Oh! Another one. Alleluia, yep. And the last page, I mean, it goes to page 70. Page 69 if you don't include the end pages. So it's a lot. And again, mine is called cars and trucks and things that go. Every single page is all kinds of vehicles and things and they're driving. So they are driving from left to right, and he uses his imagination big time. It's an alligator car, and it literally looks like an alligator with wheels and a rabbit driving it and waving. Some of them are kind of real, there's an old-time roadster which is dated even for this book, but yep, there's the milk van.

Mike 11:14
Yep.

David 11:15
There's a hay wagon, there's a car with a sailboat on top and it says sailboat. So yeah, dragster, I mean, there's a dragster, like a hot rob. Whatever the kids call them today if they even exist.

Mike 11:25
Probably not.

David 11:26
But he has to use his imagination a lot because like I said, there's 70 pages of this.

Mike 11:31
In mine, there's only 67. So he had quite the imagination in the 50s and then added two pages.

David 11:39
Added a spread. And a story. Yeah, well, and here's the story. So this is basically the very first words in the story are ma and pa and pickles and penny pig are going on a picnic. Here comes ma with the picnic basket. Please hurry up ma and you're leaving their house and then their car is always in every spread and there's also at one point a terrible driver who's labeled a terrible driver. In this particular spread he has run over all of the parking meters and he's even a picture of and it's labeled a frightened parking meter.

Mike 12:16
That's funny.

David 12:17
And every single spread there's the family of pigs. There's also this bad driver and then there's a police cat woman on a bike with a whistle and a cap and a stop sign chasing after him. And then Scarry uses that plot device to show every kind of car he can imagine at one point they have a picnic apparently and they get back to their house and things are happening. And then it says in the bottom in scoodely words this is the end.

Mike 12:44
Well, that's one way to end it.

David 12:46
Yep. And one thing I did forget when I revisited this book. I didn't do any research because I had heard of Richard Scarry and I think a pattern that's developing is you like to do a little bit of research and I like to kind of come into our podcast with a clean slate and not know stuff and learn stuff from you.

Mike 13:03
I do love to check things out and find things out about the author or the story. It's always fun to have a little bit of backstory.

David 13:12
See for me, I love doing that too, but after I read it, because I love not knowing anything. Having no, oh, he did this or she lived here. Oh, he died in Gstaad. I love knowing that stuff later. I don't want to read his plot detailed story going he died in Gstaad. What does that mean? How

Mike 13:31
can I read that into this story?

David 13:33
Why does this pig in a carrot car say hi that way? Is it because of Gstaad?

Mike 13:37
Actually, I'm gonna bring it back into the books.

One of the things, so yours is about a family of pigs.

David 13:52
Yep.

Mike 13:52
Who are going on a picnic?

David 13:54
Yes.

Mike 13:55
So the book I read is very interesting because it's totally different, but on every age except for one, I think that I found there are animals.

David 14:07
Yes.

Mike 14:09
And in one, there's a family of, I say a family of cats. They don't all look like a family, but they're cats. And they're in a line. So family of cats, there's three of them walking across the street, but then also in that page there's cows and chickens

David 14:26
and pigs.

Mike 14:27
Pigs. And then there's a store laundry truck that has stopped for gas. And the gas truck is pumping gas into the ground.

David 14:37
Into the gas station.

Mike 14:38
and then there's another person filling the store laundry truck up with gas. So there's a picture obviously of a stork on the truck and then backed by where the guys filling up the giant gas tank. There's a pigeon. So you know this was the birds page.

David 14:57
Nice.

Mike 14:57
So it's just interesting that he was very into animals it seems.

David 15:01
Well jumping to 1974 with this book and actually I'm kind of glad that you picked the wrong book because there are certain authors who wrote over the span of decades. How did their art change? How did their content and storytelling change? Did they add storytelling? As in the case of Mr. Scarry with two ours, three ours if you include Mr. but anyway.

Mike 15:26
Add in Richard.

David 15:27
Oh boy, too many eyes so little time. Yeah. Let me ask you a question. What other animals were there in your book? Did you? Is there a hippopotamus? Is there a worm?

Mike 15:37
I don't think so. Okay. Mostly your normal birds.

David 15:42
Okay.

Mike 15:42
And pigs and then cats and dogs.

David 15:46
Okay.

Mike 15:47
There's a picture of an eagle on a bus.

David 15:49
Huh.

Mike 15:49
And then lots and lots of people.

David 15:52
Wait for people. You mean actual people?

Mike 15:54
Actual people. You know who are animals,

David 15:56
too. Yes.

Mike 15:57
But one of my favorite pictures in my book was I'll just read it. This family is taking a quiet vacation. Their car trailer is like a cozy little house and it's so 1950s. It's kind of weird because it's that old style air stream trailer

David 16:19
trailer. Okay.

Mike 16:20
There's two kids out in front running around with play horses.

David 16:25
Are they watching Howdy Duty on TV? They must be. And it's a giant 11-inch screen.

Mike 16:33
The 50s.

David 16:34
I know. That's the road.

Mike 16:36
There's no TV. What do you Good.

David 16:39
Well, I'm just I was throwing out 50 stereotypes. But go ahead.

Mike 16:43
Mom is in the trailer washing a pot with the baby looking out the door at their siblings and smiling. Everyone's smiling usually except for mom.

David 16:54
Yes, because it was the 50s and everyone. But mom had a grand old time. You know, I'm actually now very glad that you pick the wrong book because my book is than yours. You'll notice I asked, wait, there are humans?

Mike 17:10
Yes.

David 17:10
I don't ever recall seeing a human ever in any Richard Scarry book.

Mike 17:16
Wow.

David 17:17
And I read them as a kid a lot in the 70s. And of course, we discovered them today as an adult. No humans. Sixty nine pages in this book, not one human. And what people do all day is another one of his that each page is about a different kind of job or profession. I've never seen a human in any of his books. And it sounds like your animals are for the most part limited to say pets in farm. Whereas I have a hippopotamus wearing a pink shirt with a red hat and a green scarf. I was hoping that hippopotamus would be somewhere in your book, because he does have recurring characters. And anyone who grew up reading Richard Scarry, if I said Lowly, they would say worm. Lowly worm is a very, if not most famous prominent character in many of his books. And he's in this one.

Mike 18:08
And Lowly worm is also on the Wikipedia page.

David 18:11
But he's not in the book that you read. So I actually want to later I want to check out the book that you read, because this would be literally a brand new part of Richard Scarry. I've never before.

Mike 18:21
Absolutely. It's very interesting how much it changes over the course of I mean, it's not like we don't change over the course of our lifetime. We're still essentially the same people, but we're affected by a bunch of different stuff.

David 18:35
Well, and two things to put it in context. Artists change. And if you look at the very early peanuts, their softer and rounder and younger, than most of the peanuts that we know. Absolutely. Yeah. And I love loony tunes. So if you look at Bugs Bunny, before Chuck Jones came on, Bugs Bunny was less cuddly. He didn't have sharp angles, but he was less cuddly and more sinister both in his tone and what he said and what he did. So you can look at certain classic iconic art like Loony tunes and the peanuts. And there were two, I mean, it wasn't even an evolution. It was two distinct periods.

Mike 19:13
Yeah.

David 19:14
and so I cannot wait to check out the book that you talked about. Because it could be the same with Richard Scarry.

Mike 19:21
Yeah.

David 19:22
And from a cultural and history standpoint, one could argue that America probably never changed more in 20 years than it did from 1955 to 1975.

Mike 19:35
I would totally agree.

David 19:37
I mean, think that. So you've got books that were written for kids in the early 50s and you've got some that were written and drawn for kids in the 70s. We might have to do a bonus episode on this to sort of look at the two different eras of Richard Scarry and that kind of thing.

Mike 19:52
Yeah, really it's crazy. And I keep going back to what I read online.

David 19:58
And

Mike 19:58
it says that most of his most famous books at least were about anthropomorphic animals.

David 20:05
yeah, entirely anthropomorphic.

Mike 20:07
Yeah,

David 20:07
Entirely, as I told you, when you said humans, I'm like, wait, Richard, who? I've never- literally, I've never seen a human in any of his books in my 50-something years of reading books. So you can put this in the episode or not.

Mike 20:22
Okay.

David 20:23
I love self-deprecating humor because it's an endless well for me. Pretty much every episode you've told me when you read the book. And I think with the exception of one, I read them a day or two before.

Mike 20:34
Yep.

David 20:34
This one, I think, I finished reading it. We were already- definitely not recording, but we were already on the call.

Now, part of that is because, again, it's not majorly plot driven. I'm also very familiar with it. I already knew the artwork, the themes, none of which we've talked about. But I already knew those broad strokes. All I had to do was look at some stuff and write down some specific things I want to talk about, which we may never get to.

Mike 21:01
Well, let's get to them now.

David 21:03
Okay. Excellent. So I'm elated to have page numbers, which is fun, because this is the first time we're not on the same page. But I've already mentioned a couple things that are funny, like the anthropomorphism of the parking meters and labeling things like a terrible driver and a frightened parking meter. And he does that throughout this book. Most of the things are labeled quite realistically, and most of the things are drawn and imagined quite realistically. But he has all kinds of fun things. There's a soft-drink truck, and on the side, it says, "So de-pop." He has that sense of humor throughout his stuff. And probably something that's similar from your book to the one I read is tons of details that you can keep discovering cool stuff. Is that the way yours was done?

Mike 21:46
Absolutely.

David 21:46
Love it.

Mike 21:48
Go through the pages. And I mean, it's kind of like what we've talked before. There's just a lot of stuff happening

David 21:53
Yeah.

Mike 21:54
in the art.

David 21:55
And I think he's using either heavy pencil, because it has some texture or some kind of pen. And it looks like he's using watercolor, but very, very rich, heavy watercolor. I can see some strokes and texture of watercolor, but the colors are pretty solid, which is great, too. I have to do some research into exactly what media he used. But it's pretty cool. Other funny things. He's got a unicycle on one page. My spreads are arranged so that there are three or four rows of vehicles, and this unicycle is so tall it goes up the entire page.

Mike 22:30
That's funny.

David 22:31
And there's a rabbit on going, and it's just hilarious. And kids dig it, but so do adults. There's a pencil car online, which is I think I mentioned alligator car earlier. Pencil cars, just a long pencil with wheels and some dude writing in it in it's hilarious. Yeah, so I just I love his stuff. There's a great sense of humor. It's rich. Oh, oh, I just noticed this. Another five cedar pencil car. And that's the caption. It's another five cedar pencil car, and there's a two cedar crayon car and it's hilarious.

Mike 23:03
Oh, my gosh.

David 23:04
I could go on. There's a stick. And I will. There's a steam roller later on. It's about to roll over someone's clothes on the ground and it says on the side of the steam roller it says press his laundry also. I don't want to list anymore because I want our readers and you to experience these jokes for the first time. But there's another recurring character in this book that I double check. He doesn't mention it anywhere. But there is a character called Goldbug. Wait a second. Did you do research?

Mike 23:42
I did.

David 23:43
Tell me what you discovered.

Mike 23:44
I actually found it just searching for Richard Scarry.

David 23:48
Oh, well.

Mike 23:49
Basically, you know, the Googles throws out a bunch of stuff and it has a list of questions, I assume other people have asked about.

David 23:59
Yes.

Mike 23:59
And one of the things I remember was, "is Goldbug on every page."

David 24:05
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So. So. Goldbug in mind. "I love it." Question. Well, first of all, this is why I don't want to do research. Because I don't want to sit here and look at this book going where the heck is Goldbug. However, on this book, Goldbug is on every spread. And sometimes very obvious, sometimes not, because I'm looking at a spread page 2223, and I did get this far almost every time with my -- Oh, various. It took me that long to find them.

Mike 24:33
Yeah.

David 24:34
Over the past minute, when you and I were talking, mostly you about Goldbug. I was looking for Goldbug. Goldbug is on every single page, every spread.

Mike 24:41
What does Goldbug look like?

David 24:43
Well, this is a spread. Very busy. Can you describe it? He is a little tiny bug, and on this spread, he is right there at the end of my fingertip.

Mike 24:53
Yep.

David 24:54
Can you see him at all in your camera?

Mike 24:55
Not really.

David 24:55
Okay. He is tiny. He is smaller than the face of most of the characters. And sometimes he's -- the first place you look is a yellow vehicle, because I'm sure Richard hid him in the yellow. And sometimes just his eyes are sticking out, which I just found on that one. Goldbug is really small. It was probably better when I said he's smaller than the face of most of the characters. And often you see his entire body, sometimes you see his eyes popping out of his head. don't know if he is like in other books, but Goldbug is on every spread. In this book, he's not mentioned anywhere. I don't think. Because there's about a two or three or four-line paragraph or two on each spread talking

Mike 25:38
And I

David 25:39
about what's going on, so and so is Paul has worn out because of changing the tire. Oops, Paul, the painter's paint truck is leaking paint. Stuff like that.

Mike 25:47
It's powerful.

David 25:48
It is. Anyway, so the point is, again, thankfully you chose the wrong book, because now we can both go back and go, okay, when did Goldbug happen? And do me a favor. Don't tell me what you found out on Google because I'm sure somebody knows that and answered it or

Mike 26:02
know. I'm sure there is somewhere.

David 26:04
Right. Okay, good.

Mike 26:05
Go down that rabbit hole. Maybe that's something if somebody's listening and actually knows.

David 26:11
Yeah.

Mike 26:11
Why don't you and the notes will have a email address you can send messages to us.

David 26:17
I like that.

Mike 26:18
I'd love to hear if somebody out there knows when that started.

David 26:22
Yeah, let us know. We'd like to hear from you because I'm lazy. I don't want to do any work. I want you all to tell me then I'll go to Wikipedia, which is not accurate and verify or not what you. Anyway, yeah, that's great. That's a great idea.

Mike 26:34
You know, it gets us interacting with other people

David 26:37
and yeah, and that's

Mike 26:38
the whole purpose of this. We want to share our books with other people.

David 26:42
Well. We grew up with and read with our kids and like that. The last thing you said before stuff like that read with our kids because one of the things even though my daughters are in fourth grade and sixth grade and eighth grade, I've probably read this to them in the past year because finding gold bug. We turn the page who finds gold bug first. It's all we care about now. And that's made it a lot of fun. And as I showed you, I don't remember, I don't remember why it went into the kitchen. I'm like, I remember where gold bug was on a spread that I read with my daughters five months ago. And sometimes it's really well hidden. So it does keep you engaged and it's kind of fun. And if you're reading it with two girls, then that's three of you who wins, who finds them first? Or her? Another thing for me that I loved about this book and it's evident in this one a little bit, but not as much because most of the spreads are just a whole series of different kinds of fake, real, imagined vehicles. But on some of them, like the jobs or things that people do all day, there was one that was a paper meal. And it showed you in a giant three, back and forth, how you go from tree to paper. And it had a lumber mill with saws and then sawdust and then it's boards and then it's pulp and then the pulp is mixed and it's printed and rolled. And then this is how you make a book. As a kid, I love that and I ended up, I love to draw and I would imagine things like that. I would just draw my own factories and things that involved processes and stuff. So his art was so good that when I was drawing a lot, I'd like to imitate it, but in my own way. And it wasn't his style that I am just the idea of very long line of a process, whether it's a car being assembled, paper being made, he probably had one from coal to coal being burned to spinning a turbine to making power. And probably even the lines to somebody's house. He had stuff like that that for little kids was just so cool just to look at.

Mike 28:37
That's awesome.

David 28:38
Yeah. I loved it. And it's very nostalgic for me because I remember it. I remember loving that stuff.

Mike 28:42
And you are very much about the process.

David 28:46
I'm a process

Mike 28:48
that's probably where you where you first found your love of processes.

David 28:52
Well, it really is. And there's one I remember that I made up on my own and it was it. I think the input was coal and the output was rainbows.

Mike 29:00
Interesting.

David 29:01
And I just made that up. I don't remember any details. I remember I just, I had the magic markers, the scented ones.

Mike 29:07
i remember those i think

David 29:08
black was liquorish brown was cinnamon so forth and so on

Mike 29:11
that's the one i remembers the black because that's my favorite

David 29:14
i use those exact markers to make a process a machine where you put in coal and you get rainbows or something like that but i don't think i would have done that without Richard Scarry

Mike 29:24
that's awesome

David 29:24
yeah it was cool

Mike 29:25
so thanks Richard

David 29:26
thank you Richard i hope your ashes doing well and Gstaad

Mike 29:31
i i feel like we're okay if anyone knows any other kids books that have Gstaad in them please let us know

David 29:39
well mike maybe after doing many seasons of this we will be so expertise uh we're going to write some children's books and everyone's got to find where on each page where is gold bug skiing Gstaad on this particular spread who knows where this will go

Mike 29:59
who knows

David 30:00
maybe we'll just keep doing the podcast or maybe somewhere in between who knows

Mike 30:03
sounds like good plan though yeah i like the podcast we're having a time

David 30:06
it

Mike 30:06
with

David 30:07
i just don't ever want to have to say what they said and that thing you do hey there's our fan

i

Mike 30:13
think we've already surpassed that and we haven't even put an episode out yet.

David 30:16
I know we're nailing it

Mike 30:18
pretty awesome and not all just family

David 30:20
yeah i was going to say we had more than just between the kids and the wives we have what eight people total including ourselves no nine I'm not good with math. go ahead nine yes that's right okay i forget about me

Mike 30:34
well because you're looking at the other eight people on the room there's eight people in oh wait

David 30:39
it's

Mike 30:39
out of people

David 30:40
too you're a people I'm a people

Mike 30:42
wouldn't you like to be a people too

David 30:43
be a people be doctor people

Mike 30:45
oh yeah

David 30:45
oh yeah

Mike 30:46
so this was really fun having two different books by the same author that we're talking about

David 30:52
yep

Mike 30:52
It really been I don't know I've really enjoyed talking about how you can see and know the differences of someone who wrote a in 1951 and then wrote another one with many in between in the 70s and then he was still writing I don't know what until he died

David 31:13
but probably close right

Mike 31:14
thing for a long time yeah absolutely so it's interesting to see that art of somebody's journey

David 31:21
yep and what's also interesting i told you about the this is why i love improv and how can apply to life i told you about the of our improv show where i got the first laugh without saying the word because we set up taxi wrong and the coach said make it a little bit bigger and i took my steering wheel from normal to huge this is the same thing you made a mistake and because of it we're like wait a second what about as you said the journey of an artist what about different styles and in the cultural context or his or her personal context what about we purposely pick two different books by an artist and compare them or let's look into the history of the artist and that kind of thing so this could lead to other things because we made a mistake so it's pretty cool

Mike 32:08
it was really

David 32:09
because i also thought that maybe okay we're going to have part two where you actually do read this book and we can talk about the specifics but we don't need to

Mike 32:16
cool no

David 32:17
we could but we don't need to because we don't want to give away specifics there's no plot and the bottom line is you discover Richard Scarry i got to share Richard Scarry and hopefully our listeners will do both share rediscover

Mike 32:30
or discover and i got to be nostalgic about the 50s there's a lot of 50 scars and 50s people

David 32:37
one of the reasons i laughed when you said nostalgic about the 50s which you probably did on purpose because i know that you were born in 70 something there is a great show at the second city called pinata full of bees in 1995 and Scott Adsit was in that show and he's the guy who plays like one of the crazier writers on 30 rock anyway he had a line that began a scene i really missed the 50s even though i was born in 64 and everyone died laughing because with grease and happy days and all the things a ton of us missed the 50s he but we never even saw yeah i never saw the 50s nonetheless experienced it as a teen or an adult but anyway

Mike 33:19
that was funny and it's funny like wow yes it's very funny

David 33:25
are you trying to give yourself less work to do

Mike 33:27
okay i was we should probably wrap wrap wrap it up

David 33:31
well okay so as i said on page 69 they're in four words zigzaggy but with block capitals this is the end so Mr. Scarry with this book did say this is the end there's also a stop sign and there's a plot resolution some might now that you've been exposed to the world of rich and Scarry what do you think

Mike 33:51
I'm gonna go back to my last page and describe that which is a Volkswagen beetle it seems with a family and must be a very small family. Because there's a police officer standing tall who looks like he's either ginormous or,

David 34:09
in the foreground,

Mike 34:11
they're super, super small.

David 34:12
Okay.

Mike 34:13
There are six people in the car, mom, dad, baby, in the front seat.

David 34:18
Of course.

On the driver's lap.

Mike 34:22
No. On mom's lap.

David 34:24
Okay. Okay, it wasn't the 40s, sorry. I went too far back.

Mike 34:27
Yes. With triplets in the back seat. And then a dog pooping his head out of the sunroof.

David 34:35
Yep.

Mike 34:36
And also coming out of the sunroof is an inflatable, maybe a giraffe, and some fishing poles and a beach umbrella. And that's it. But if anybody's been in a Volkswagen Beetle from that time period, how you get six people in there is just simply amazing.

David 34:54
Yeah. So my into my book is The Pigs Return Home. They have new neighbors and they say it looks like we do have new neighbors and it's a million different characters that we've seen in the book. It's actually a family of a million rabbits. One's driving a cabbage car. One's driving a carrot car. They're probably callbacks from the book. And so it does have a plot resolution if you will.

Mike 35:17
Look

David 35:17
And

Mike 35:17
at that.

David 35:18
everyone's saying hi. The bad guy who kept driving over things. The car is like, I'm tired. All the wheels are rolled off the car. And the cat police lady on the bike says, I got you at last.

So yet another all the plot twists, everything's all the loose ends are tied up.

Mike 35:38
The last thing I want to say unless you have more.

David 35:40
Go ahead

Mike 35:41
and wrapping up the show with this is I think we talked a little bit about this in your book. They're going on a picnic.

David 35:48
Yes.

Mike 35:49
So in my book, it ends. Now all the family is going for a picnic. Goodbye.

David 35:56
I do have one more thing to

Mike 35:57
No,

David 35:57
add.

Mike 35:58
that was the end. Goodbye.