Books like It's a Busy, Busy World

Perhaps I would be able to appreciate and enjoy Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World somewhat more if I had first encountered it as a young child (which no, I did not). For yes, I can certainly and to a point both see and understand how the combination of Richard Scarry's narrative and images is imbued with much movement and often laugh-out-loud humour that might well tickle the fancy of young readers and listeners (and in particular if they are also able to just consider the presented stories and illustrations in Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World uncritically). However, as an older reader and indeed as a reader who in fact has since my family's immigration to Canada from Germany when I was ten and having had to experience very much often nasty and despicable bullying due to my ethnic and genetic background as a German absolutely and utterly despised stereotyping and in particular if it is joyfully and unapologetically overused, I simply cannot and will not stomach and must rather univocally condemn the rather massive amounts of ethnic, cultural and gender stereotyping that I have encountered during this here and yes my first and most definitely also my last perusal of Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World. As sorry and I do apologise to those of you who seem to have fond childhood memories of Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World, but in my humble opinion, almost EVERY single story featured seems to present and feature some type of stereotyping and/or generalising (such as that for example the Swiss climb mountains and blow their alphorns, that Germans are obviously all absolutely obsessive about cleanliness, that Italians drive like maniacs, that the Scots are gaga with regard to their bagpipes and so on and so on). Combined with the fact that a few of Richard Scarry's illustrations even seem and feel (at least to and for me) as potentially visually offensive (such as that Scarry draws his Algerians as canines and dresses them in Islamic garb, even though dogs are indeed and definitely often considered as unclean animals by many Muslims) and that the names Richard Scarry gives to his diverse characters, while certainly to an extent humorous, are also way way too much of the time teeming with sometimes quite underhanded and nasty political and cultural jabs and punches (naming a Russian ursine doctor after Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev and calling the Algerian canine detective in Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World Couscous after the famous but still rather common grain dish), I can and will personally only consider two stars maximum for Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World (and frankly, even that two star ranking is in fact being somewhat kind on my part, since if I would consider how I have emotionally reacted to Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World, I should probably even be considering only one star).