I recently went shopping with my wife to pick out a birthday gifts for our twin niece and nephew who just turned 1 years old.

We went to Barnes & Noble to look for a specific book Valerie had recommended to her called "The Everything Book". Long story short, the book was not in stock.

So we browsed....What I came across brought back a flood of memories from my childhood,

When I was a child I absolutely LOVED the Busytown series by Richard Scarry (pronounced 'Scary') and to this day I think about the good times I had as a little boy reading those books.

Scarry's books always had anthropomorphic animals as its' characters (animals such as cats, rabbits, pigs, mice, raccoons, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, owls, bears, goats, elephants, foxes, gorillas, crocodiles, dogs, wolves, hyenas, etc.)

These animals would teach the reader what different people did during the day. I can not see a drawing of a Richard Scarry scene and not have positive flashbacks to my childhood.

Scarry started with Little Golden Books in 1949, those thin books with the shiny gold spine (I used to want to collect them all). He later moved on to his widly popular Busytown series. One of his most popular books was What Do People Do All Day? (click for image). That one is a great book for elementary kids who sit at home during the summer and wonder what daddy's doing.