I recalled as a kid enjoying books with detailed illustrations where there’s lots of little detail to find. After an internet search recommendation I bought “What Do People Do All Day?” by Richard Scarry.

I didn’t realize it was from the seventies! It shows in the attitudes to cars and vehicles and electricity and a complete lack of awareness of environmental issues and gender issues, as well as missing out modern occupations based around IT (or whatever it’s called these days).

Here’s an article https://medium.com/designing-in-sunlight/whats-up-on-earth-day-in-busytown-4c3204e2e6af

Are there any contemporary equivalents to Busy Town you can recommend?

Honestly never gave it any thought at that age. Not looked at those books in particular but amongst our kids friends are different nationalities, ethnicities, houses with two mums.

The stuff they feed them in early years and my boys school is reasonably diverse. I think at that age it’s really more about your own reaction and behaviours.

I grew up on that 70s stuff and while I’m certainly not going to go around claiming I’m “woke” unless it’s by an alarm clock I grew up in a liberal, tolerant household and guess what that’s how I turned out.

The author of the article in your link is actually recommending Scarry’s books!
I think the detail and humour in Scarry’s illustrations fascinate kids in a way that doesn’t date, and they would be a great way of duscussing the things that are different now if you are reading them with a child.

Our daughter really liked the Octonauts at that age, and they have some books like this one:

Which have fold out pages and loads of details with different sea creatures etc.

She also liked this one, which has a lot of details to explore. It’s a heartwarming story of a dreadful capitalist bunny who is over thrown by his workers rising up and smashing the system. Get a copy before it’s banned.

We all loved any book by Oliver Jeffers.

Oliver Jeffers’ ‘Here we are’
It’s a beautiful book with lovely messages.
Jeffers’ books are wonderful. Well written and the illustrations are brilliant.
‘Heart and the bottle’ broke me though, watch out for that one.

I’d also recommend ‘Manfred the Baddie’ and ‘Jeremiah jellyfish flies high’ by John Farrell. The illustrations are great, loads going on, and the stories are ace as well.

Edit: @woffle beat me to it!

If you’re feeling speedy, shred till bed?

On the lots of stuff to find, the ten little aliens/pirates/princesses have a bunch of detail, very different style thou

Not contemporary but Animalia by Graeme Best is so detailed it took him 3 years to draw. One page for each letter of the alphabet with tonnes of little drawings of things beginning with that letter. Plus a hard to find picture of the author hidden away on each page. Not a story book but my daughter loves it.

Oi, Dog and sequels.

AWESOMENESS!

Micro likes ‘Little Rabbit Foo Foo’ by Michael Rosen. Not exactly high brow even for 3 year old, however the Arthur Robbins illustractions are very expressive and we can look at them for a long time.

As per CFH, love the ‘Oi, Dog!’ Series. Kes Gray and Jim Field I think. Also love Rachel Bright/Jim Field (Lion inside, Squirrels that Squabble, Koala that could)

Yeah did occur to me after posting I’m probably over thinking it. There’s just so many books/toys he already has which are all vehicle related. He’s a big fan of the Go Jetters on Cbeebies which are very environmentally aware which is good.

Also noticed after posting, the article was actually recommending reading it – which actually changed my mind a bit – which goes back to garagedwellers response.

Already have Ten Little Robots, Oi Dog/Frog, but thanks for all the recommendations will check them out.

Of what I have ready of What Do People Do All Day, it has gone down well, and I enjoyed pointing out all the little things happening in the illustrations to him, and he’d also notice stuff too, and you can just dip into a random section of the book and read/look at it.