The Happy Capitalism of Richard Scarry’s Busytown: Welcome to the pro-market world of children’s book author and illustrator Richard Scarry. (Elizabeth Nolan Brown, June 2026, reason)
To me, the book’s most notable feature is its uncomplicated and nonchalant promotion of free market economics. Again and again in What Do People Do All Day?, Scarry illustrates how capitalism can benefit both buyer and seller. Busytown characters use their labor and skills to provide products and services their neighbors want and, in exchange, earn money that they use to fulfill their own families’ needs or invest in their own business activities.
What makes this especially great is that the book’s pro-market bent feels more incidental than ideological. This isn’t a book that hits readers over the head with a particular worldview. Rather, it implies a defense of free market capitalism just by describing the simple and symbiotic way that free markets work.