Richard Scarry

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Richard McClure Scarry [ ˈskæri ] (born June 5, 1919 in Boston , Massachusetts ; † April 30, 1994 in Gstaad ), was a children's author and illustrator who has published over 300 books, of which over 300 million copies were sold worldwide.

Life

His parents ran a business in Boston. The Scarrys enjoyed a comfortable life even during the Great Depression . After graduating from high school , Scarry enrolled in business college but soon gave up studying because he found it wasn't what he liked best. He then studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston until he was drafted into the US Army during World War II .

After the war, Scarry worked for the layout departments of various magazines before he had his career breakthrough in 1949 with Little Golden Books . In 1955 he developed the character Smokey Bear for Little Golden Books. His most famous book series took place in Busytown ( Schaffenau in the German translation).

Scarry's characters are almost always humanized animals. Occasionally this leads to grotesque situations: animals are portrayed as farmers building supplies, including the macabre example of a pig portrayed as a butcher selling bacon and sausages at the counter. By using animals instead of people, Scarry was able to avoid his characters wearing certain ethnic characteristics, which helped bring the message of his stories to a wider audience. In addition, the accidents shown do not appear as dangerous to the humanized animals as they would have been the case with drawn human figures.

In the 1980s and 1990s, many picture books of his most popular book series Best Ever were turned into animated videos. In 1993 the picture books of the Busytown series were processed into the animated series The Busy World of Richard Scarry , which was broadcast in America from 1993 to 1996 on Showtime and then on Nickelodeon.

In Germany, The Busy World of Richard Scarry is broadcast on Junior.TV under the title Egon's Colorful World .

In 1986 the family moved with their son to Switzerland after traveling to Europe for the first time in 1963. In 1972 Scarry bought a chalet in Gstaad , Switzerland. Here he set up his studio, where he spent most of the day writing and illustrating his books. His studio contained a single desk, lamp, and chair. His wife was also not allowed to disturb him except for an hour during the lunch break. This does not mean that Scarry was a minimalist - according to his son, countless things (from every trip) were piled up.

His wife, Patricia Scarry, nee Murphy, was a children's book writer Richard met while collaborating when he was still a reader illustrator . They were married after three weeks. She is blamed for writing many of the stories in his subsequent children's books, such as Good Night, Little Bear , The Bunny Book , and The Fishing Cat . According to their son, Patricia and Richard worked together on a total of 10 books; Patricia used another illustrator for later works.

His son, Richard Scarry Jr., is also an illustrator who sometimes works under his nickname "Huck Scarry" and sometimes in the style of his father as "Richard Scarry". Huck lives in Vienna .

Works

literature

  • Walter Retan, Ole Risom: The Busy, Busy World of Richard Scarry. Harry N. Abrams, New York 1997, ISBN 0-8109-4000-0 . (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Series info - Egon's colorful world. ( Memento from August 3, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) on junior.tv
personal data
SURNAME Scarry, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Scarry, Richard McClure (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American children's author and illustrator
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1994
Place of death Gstaad