Richard Scarry (1919-1994)

Richard Scarry is one of the world’s best-loved children’s authors. Generations of children have grown up spending hours poring over his books filled with colorful details of their daily lives. He showed a lively interest in the words and concepts of early childhood. When asked his age, Scarry would always hold up one hand and laugh, saying, “five!”

Born in 1919, Richard Scarry was raised and educated in Boston, Massachusetts. After five years of drawing maps and designing graphics for the US Army, he moved to New York to pursue a career in commercial art. He found a perfect home for his work at Golden Books. Scarry’s initial assignments included Little Golden Books featuring popular characters of the day. Eventually, Scarry created his own original characters, such as Lowly Worm and Huckle Cat. Before that, he created Nicholas, a young rabbit clad in red overalls, for the now-iconic classic I Am a Bunny.

In his career, Richard Scarry illustrated more than 150 books, many of which have never been out of print. His books have sold over 100 million copies worldwide and are published in more than twenty languages. Richard Scarry Jr., also an illustrator, carries on his father’s work today under the name Huck Scarry.

Richard Scarry passed away at his home in Gstaad, Switzerland, in 1994. He was posthumously awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Illustrators in 2012.

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