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Comment by Multiplayer | Hacker News Reader

I read his books every day when really young. He created such a great world to imagine. The note about him moving to Switzerland makes sense - his world did feel really European now that I think about it.

My kids, now grown, did not get to experience his books - are his books sold widely anymore?

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His books are still kicking around, although not as big as they used to be. My toddler has a few.

They're still lovely books, but I think they're less popular mostly because they're a bit dated now; lots of obsolete jobs and few female animals doing any of the cool jobs.

I have a 5yo daughter, and I appreciate that *What Do People Do All Day?* have female characters in homemaker roles, which is still common in most of the world. Many of her other books have female protagonists doing everything else.

Part of an education should be learning how other people live, whether it's in the past or in another part of the world. And of course, there's nothing wrong with being a homemaker today.

> I have a 5yo daughter, and I appreciate that What Do People Do All Day? have female characters in homemaker roles, which is still common in most of the world. Many of her other books have female protagonists doing everything else.

Is that a new copy or an old one?

The newer editions of Best Word Book Ever were updated to be less stereotypical (I think there's a gallery somewhere that shows the changes). Unfortunately the updated art is noticeably inferior (even to my untrained eye), and in some places kinda dumb (on one page I think they decided they needed more girls, so they phoned it in and slapped a big "LISA" on the shirt of some androgynous animal). Also they dropped A LOT of content, so the newer editions are something like half as long.

If it's updated, then I couldn't tell. Everything seemed like 50s/60s in it to me.

The abridged and edited versions were somewhat disappointing to me. I remember looking through these books as a kid and how there was so much in them.

While they are dated, there are insights in some of them. If they had a bakery, they also had a mill where the flour was ground, and that required wheat which was gathered.

The houses had cross-sections showing the pipes and where water came into the house and distributed to the faucets/showers. It connected to the fireplugs outside.

There was an inter-connectedness to this world that is still simplified, of course, but so much deeper than anything else I can think of in that format. The only thing vaguely comparable would be the DK books which are packed with info. Most kids books are ultra-simplified and not meant for exploration, they are just a linear "show this".

Richard Scarry's books are problematic because of the reasons you stated, and I think there were issues with ethnic and gender stereotypes as well (similar to issues with Dr. Seuss). He updated some of them in the 90s to reflect changing mores, but I don't know if those efforts reached all of them.

Yes, you can buy them. When I was a child, my friend owned the "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go" book and I spent hours browsing the book by myself when visiting him. When I had children, it was one of the first books that I bought, and they loved it, too, although not quite as much as me. It is a great present for young children if you don't want to bring a Nintendo gift card.

I have an infant and we have a number of his books. Some bought new.

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