It was only a matter of time before the dreaded Cat Family Book became an iPhone app. The real title of the Cat Family Book is actually Richard Scarry’s Best First Book Ever! I know the title because I own the damn book, which is currently sitting on my chitchen counter.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought the book (I *think* I bought it, I don’t *think* it was a gift) for my 2-year-old book freak. But, OMG! This book became a nightmare. It is basically a picture book. Every page shows a different scene in Busytown and can I just say that Busytown is BUSY!!! There is a very thin plotline (very thin) to the book, maybe a few lines per page, but for the most part, every single blasted item on each page is LABELED: “soap dish”, “apple”, “lost sneaker”, “pencil car”, etc. etc.

I’m sure there are kids who like to “read” books like this by themselves, savoring all of the pictures on each page and puzzling out (or not) the words beside them. I am sure there are kids who are happy to have someone read them the text involved in the thin little plot on each page. Not my kid. We had to read every blasted word on the page. If I missed a blasted label, she would point it out. She did this to The Commander too, although not so much to Grandroobly, who was allowed to just kind of page through without reprimand. Once many years ago we arrived at the grandparents’ house in Sault Ste. Siberia and, as I was hauling all of our crap into the house, The Comm pulled me aside and rather anxiously stage-whispered, “Didja bring the Cat Family Book?” “No,” I said and she replied, “Thank God!”

A couple years ago, I ran across the book down in the dungeon and I looked for an iPhone app. What the heck, there are Dr. Seuss iPhone apps out there, maybe Richard Scarry’s books are out there too. No dice. But Busytown totally lends itself to iPhone app-ability and so there is one now and yes I have it on my phone. [It is a bit clunky…]

And then I found a page with all kinds of links to Busytown “stuff”. Who knew that the book I bought all those years ago and saved (against all odds) has a kind of a life of its own on the internet. Or at least its author does. And not one that I would’ve ever dreamed of back in the days when I was dragging baby and toddler paraphernalia around. When I was reading every word of that book to my toddler, I was overwhelmed enough by my young children and my house and my intense part-time job and whatever that I did not catch on to a lot of the philosophical stuff that might have been going on in the author’s mind when he created his books. My bad and it is so much fun to revisit Richard Scarry and Busytown with a different frame of mind.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2012 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.