Eric Carle
Eric Carle
Eric Carleis an American designer, illustrator, and writer of children's books. He is most famous for The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a picture book with few words that has been translated into more than 62 languages and sold more than 52 million copies. Since it was published in 1969 he has illustrated more than 70 books, most of which he also wrote, and more than 162 million copies of his books have been sold around the world. He won the biennial...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth25 June 1929
CitySyracuse, NY
CountryUnited States of America
That's something I learned in art school. I studied graphic design in Germany, and my professor emphasized the responsibility that designers and illustrators have towards the people they create things for.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear was kind of my first important book
You know, now it's sinking in. It's taken me a long time to realize - and it is sinking in - how important this book is. And I have a certain distance now. I've done it such a long time ago.
Papa, please get the moon for me.
One day I think it's the greatest idea ever that I'm working on. The next day I think it's the worst that I've ever worked on - and I swing between that a lot. Some days I'm very happy with what I'm doing, and the next day I am desperate - it's not working out!
The hardest part is developing the idea, and that can take years
We have eyes, and we're looking at stuff all the time, all day long. And I just think that whatever our eyes touch should be beautiful, tasteful, appealing, and important.
They are deceptively simple. I admit that. But for me, all my life I try to simplify things. As a child in school, things were very hard for me to understand often, and I developed a knack, I think. I developed a process to simplify things so I would understand them.
Simplify, slow down, be kind. And don't forget to have art in your life - music, paintings, theater, dance, and sunsets.
Let's put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20
He built a small house, called a cocoon, around himself. He stayed inside for more than two weeks. Then he nibbled a hole in the cocoon, pushed his way out and... he was a beautiful butterfly!
One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and - pop! - out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar.
Ever since I was very young, as far back as I can remember, I have loved making pictures. I knew even as a child that, when I grew up, I would be an artist of some kind. The lovely feeling of my pencil touching paper, a crayon making a star shape in my sketchbook, or my brush dipping into bright and colorful paints — these things affect me as joyfully today as they did all those years ago.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar” story is about hope. You, like the little caterpillar, will grow up, unfold your wings and fly off into the future