Manners are abstract until somebody draws them. Richard Scarry draws them. Huckle Cat, Lowly Worm and the whole Busytown crowd work their way through the situations a small child actually meets: the classroom, the table, the sidewalk, the moment when there is one cake and more than one guest. Each page shows the right way to behave and lets the picture make the argument, which is why it lands with a four year old when a lecture does not.

Scarry spent his career on exactly this problem. He drew the ordinary world at a level of detail no other illustrator bothered with, so a child could pore over a single page and find the story inside the story. Safety rules sit alongside the please and thank you here, and both are treated as the same kind of knowledge: things you learn once and use forever.

Thirty two pages, eight inches square, in the paperback Pictureback format that was built to be affordable and handed around. This is the copy that ends up in the car, in the classroom book box and at the grandparents' house, and none of those places is a mistake.