8 edits made to Richard Scarry's children's books to remove sexism and racism

Richard Scarry’s classic children’s books have been altered to progress with the times.

The prolific author began publishing books in the 1950s and now has over 250 books to his name. As many of the titles were created in the mid-20th century some of the characters and themes have become a little outdated.

The changes have been made slowly over the past decade or so, and some readers would barely notice… But the changes will make a big difference to perceptions and social commentary.

The biggest changes are related to gender stereotypes. Where once there was a “pretty stewardess” welcoming passengers onto the plane, there is now an “Flight Attendant”, and where there was once a mother pushing her baby in a stroller, there is now a father. Gone are the old fashioned views on parenting and housekeeping, and there are no more gendered careers either- both men and women can be police officers and fire fighters.

See all the differences in the pictures captured by Alan Taylor of The Atlantic back in 2015.

“The 1963 edition is my own, bought for me in the late 60’s when I was a toddler, and read to tatters. The 1991 edition belongs to my kids today. I was so familiar with the older one that I immediately started noticing a few differences, and so have catalogued 14 of the more interesting differences here in this collection.”

Janice McCabe, the assistant professor of sociology who led a study on 20th century children’s books for Florida State University, said:

“The widespread pattern of underrepresentation of females that we find supports the belief that female characters are less important and interesting than male characters. This may contribute to a sense of unimportance among girls and privilege among boys. The gender inequalities we found may be particularly powerful because they are reinforced by patterns of male-dominated characters in many other aspects of children’s media, including cartoons, G-rated films, video games and even colouring books.”