Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day?

Richard Scarry books are nostalgic gold. There’s so much going on on every page, and I remember it all like it was yesterday (which it probably was, because half of the illustrations are on Twitter as memes).

The little vignettes cover all the traditional kids’ book themes—firemen, policemen, ship voyages, road construction—but then go further. Everyone is a Worker talks about how money flows through the economy, and Wood & How We Use It discusses a supply chain, from raw materials to production and manufacturing to transportation (albeit in grossly unrealistic trucks). 

Ahhh, Richard Scarry. All of the books on this list are great for children, but this is the only one I actually read as a child, and the fact that I’m still thinking about it now means it must have been formative. There’s a reason this book’s setting is called “Busytown:” animal citizens hard at work burst from every door and window, cutaways show how the buildings are constructed and plumbed, and vehicles of all shapes and sizes (including a quadruple-decker bus full of rabbits) whizz through the streets. What Do People Do All Day? doesn’t leave out the mundanities… show more.