Cause and Effect

Katherine Delle
9/7/08
Dr. Johns
Seminar in composition
“What Do People Do All Day” (group 1’s first assignment)

One thing that many children regardless of who their parents are and what decade they were born in have in common is that they can be oblivious to how things around them work. In his fabulous children’s book, “What Do People Do All Day”, Richard Scarry has managed to combat this notion and teach children a variety of things regarding the nature of work. Something of this nature that particularly stands out in the book is the idea of cause and effect. Scarry attempts to teach children that in work, every input generated produces an output. In other words, he attempts to show children everything that goes into producing the things which are all around them on a daily basis. Also, he tries to show that there are rewards involved when work is accomplished successfully.

The first example of Scarry teaching children this idea is in the title “Building a House” on page 9. The situation is something familiar to many children: the little boy, Huckle, wanted someone to play with but there were no other houses near Huckle’s home. The effect of the situation was that one day a team of workers came to build a new house next door. In the process of showing this cause and effect situation, Scarry breaks down the action of building a house so children can understand everything that goes into it. He does a good job of simplifying something that could be a confusing topic for small children. He shows the mason, the bricklayer, the carpenter, the plumber, and the electrician, all contributing to the final product of building a new house.

In the title “Firemen to the Rescue”, the cause and effect situation is a little different than the previous one because it is explaining an emergency situation. The cause was that there was a fire in the house and the effect was that the firemen came to put it out and to save the people in the house. All the firemen worked together in order to produce the effect. The chief came to oversee things, some of the men were in charge of the hoses and some were in charge of getting the people out of the house safely. I think that this situation was a good one to include because it lets children know about the bravery and determination that many people display in their jobs. It is a different type of cause and effect situation because these workers aren’t producing something tangible such as a house, crops, or bread. Instead, Scarry is showing children that firemen have big responsibilities because they have to protect people and their homes.

I definitely agree with Scarry’s cause and effect portrayal of work in this book. Most of the situations are general displays of how things happen in the real world, such as in the title “Where bread comes from.” This was a particularly good topic to include in the book because it is something that many children have never actually thought of but it is something they see regularly. Scarry shows that when bread is needed many different people all with different jobs work together to produce the final product of the bread. Scarry does a god job of not only showing children all the work that goes into producing the bread but he also goes so far as to explain what some of the ingredients in bread are and what the tools that are used are.


Although I agree with most of Scarry’s cause and effect portrayal, one part of the effect portrayal that I don’t always agree with is the reward system. Money is a little bit glorified in the book with some of the professions, especially in the pictures. Of course making money is a major part of work but I don’t think that Scarry should have displayed it the way he did in the pictures, especially because the pictures are what children are looking at and are being influenced by. For example, in “Everyone is a Worker” (page 6) one of the pictures shows Alfalfa the farmer and Stitches the tailor exchanging money by playfully throwing it to each other. Money shouldn’t be taken lightly in my opinion as it is shown here. Another example of this sort of materialism is under “Building a New House” when all the workers are being paid after the house is finished (page 13). The picture shows the workers all running happily toward Stitches, (the rabbit who is paying them) who is standing with a giant sack overflowing with money that includes the title “bag of money.” Children might get the wrong idea from this picture that money is the only gratification that comes out of certain jobs.

Richard Scarry’s book “What Do People Do All Day” is able to successfully teach children what work is able to produce and how this production is accomplished. One of the reasons that I agree with him in the book is because he shows many of the jobs in cause and effect situations. In other words, he shows that when something is needed, (the cause) people work together to fulfill this need (the effect). Another one of Scarry’s successes in this book are that he breaks down many of the different processes involved in certain jobs (ex. A flour mill, a sawmill, building a new road, a paper company, etc) in order to show what the effect is. One would think that some of these processes would be too complicated for children to understand, but Scarry explains these things in such a way so that it is interesting to them. Although my one criticism of the book is the hint of materialism, overall I definitely agree with Scarry portraying work in the sense of a cause and effect process.