Masters of the Art of Storytelling for Children (Part 7)

Con­tin­ued from the pre­vi­ous chap­ter: Mas­ters of the Art of Sto­ry­telling for Chil­dren (Part 6)

Eric was invit­ed to design the Google logo using the very hun­gry cater­pil­lar

Eric Car­le
Eric Car­le (1929-) is a junior of Lioni, and they are often inad­ver­tent­ly linked togeth­er, per­haps because they do have some sim­i­lar­i­ties.

Illus­tra­tion by Lionel Leoni on the left and Car­l’s illus­tra­tion on the right

For exam­ple, they both worked in adver­tis­ing design before cre­at­ing pic­ture books. This was thanks to Lioni. In 1952, when 23-year-old Carl fled Ger­many to New York with only $40 in his pock­et, he met Lioni. Some­how, this impul­sive young man impressed the design giant. Lioni not only treat­ed him to lunch but also arranged his first adver­tis­ing design job.

Bee­tle car paint­ed with a cater­pil­lar pat­tern

For exam­ple, they can both be con­sid­ered Euro­pean. Lioni was born in the Nether­lands and spent his teenage years in Italy. Because of his Jew­ish ances­try and his wife’s sta­tus as the daugh­ter of a founder of the Ital­ian Com­mu­nist Par­ty, he was forced to immi­grate to the Unit­ed States dur­ing World War II. Karl was born in the Unit­ed States, but his par­ents were Ger­man. When he was six, his fam­i­ly returned to Ger­many. Lat­er, his father was draft­ed into the Sovi­et army and trag­i­cal­ly spent eight years as a pris­on­er of war, and as a teenag­er, he was forced to dig trench­es. Per­haps it was these unique expe­ri­ences that gave the two artists end­less top­ics to dis­cuss when­ev­er they met.

Eric Car­le’s school in Ger­many

For exam­ple, they were both excep­tion­al­ly skilled at using col­lage in their pic­ture books, a tech­nique no one had pre­vi­ous­ly mas­tered. Lion­i’s first book, Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low, was col­laged, as was Car­r’s first book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Are You Look­ing At? How­ev­er, Carr employed this tech­nique more thor­ough­ly, incor­po­rat­ing it into near­ly all of his pic­ture books. He even wrote tuto­ri­als and illus­trat­ed them to teach read­ers how to cre­ate their own col­lages. Per­haps because Car­r’s pic­ture books resem­bled toys so much, the Calde­cott Medal judges were reluc­tant to award him the grand prize.

A demon­stra­tion of Car­l’s meth­ods and mate­ri­als for cre­at­ing pic­ture books (inside the Carl Art Muse­um)

In fact, a child can eas­i­ly learn this cre­ative method

Anoth­er sim­i­lar­i­ty is that they were both quite old when they switched to mak­ing pic­ture books, and the oppor­tu­ni­ty was coin­ci­den­tal.

When Carl was 38, edu­ca­tor and author Bill Mar­tin Jr. asked him to illus­trate a sto­ry. He said he had seen an adver­tise­ment designed by Carl and was cap­ti­vat­ed by the red lob­ster in it. He thought it was exact­ly the illus­tra­tion style he need­ed. Intrigued, Carl read­i­ly agreed, and the two col­lab­o­rat­ed to cre­ate “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Are You Look­ing At?” This book, as sim­ple as it could be, has cap­ti­vat­ed count­less chil­dren.

Eng­lish ver­sion cov­er

Cov­er of the Chi­nese Edi­tion (Eng­lish and Chi­nese)

Chi­nese ver­sion inte­ri­or page illus­tra­tions

This is also a singable book, but the ver­sion is slight­ly dif­fer­ent. The orig­i­nal word for “teacher” is “mon­key” :)

Carl found the exhil­a­rat­ing feel­ing of child­hood draw­ing in cre­at­ing this book. In his mem­o­ry, his kinder­garten days were a par­adise. He missed his kinder­garten teacher most. Although he could­n’t remem­ber her name or what she looked like, he remem­bered how she great­ly admired his draw­ing tal­ent and even called home to tell his par­ents, “This child is incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed. Please encour­age him in this area.” Com­pared to adver­tis­ing design, which he had grown some­what tired of, cre­at­ing pic­ture books felt like a tru­ly free­ing expe­ri­ence. So, like Leonie before him, he began cre­at­ing his own pic­ture books.

Eric Car­le Self-Por­trait

One day in 1969, Carl was fid­dling with a hole punch and look­ing at the tiny holes he punched on paper when he sud­den­ly got the inspi­ra­tion to write a sto­ry about a “book­worm.” He quick­ly called his edi­tor, but for­tu­nate­ly, the edi­tor was not over­whelmed by this won­der­ful idea and sug­gest­ed that the name “cater­pil­lar” would be bet­ter.

A few months lat­er, “The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar” was born. It tells the sto­ry of a tiny, hun­gry new­born cater­pil­lar who eats an apple on Mon­day, two pears on Tues­day, and three plums on Wednes­day. As he con­tin­ues his jour­ney, he trans­forms into a plump cater­pil­lar, a chrysalis, and, a few weeks lat­er, a beau­ti­ful but­ter­fly. The sto­ry is sim­ple, but the stun­ning illus­tra­tions make it a visu­al feast. The high­light is the string of tiny holes through­out the book, rep­re­sent­ing the cater­pil­lar’s path. For years, near­ly every child has been unable to resist explor­ing it with their fin­gers. Trans­lat­ed into over 30 lan­guages, includ­ing Chi­nese, the book has sold over 17 mil­lion copies, mak­ing it one of the most pop­u­lar pic­ture books for chil­dren.

The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar (Chi­nese ver­sion) cov­er

Illus­tra­tions from the Chi­nese edi­tion of The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar

To date, Eric Car­le has cre­at­ed more than 70 pic­ture books and found­ed his own per­son­al art gallery in Mass­a­chu­setts in 2002, which is also the first pic­ture book gallery in the Unit­ed States.

Exte­ri­or view of the Eric Car­le Pic­ture Book Muse­um

Take a clos­er look at the muse­um’s icon, from top to bot­tom—
Car­l’s cater­pil­lar, Lionel’s field mouse, Sendak’s beast

To know what hap­pens next, please wait for the next episode.

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High­light 1: Eric Car­le’s offi­cial web­site demon­strates in detail how he makes pic­ture books. You can try it at home. It is said that many young read­ers do a very good job and even send their works to the painter.
1. Car­l’s process of mak­ing col­ored stick­ers
2. Car­l’s process of mak­ing pic­tures

Bonus 2: Car­l’s offi­cial web­site also fea­tures a video of him read­ing “The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar”:

Click the link on the pic­ture to view it.

Tid­bit 3: Pho­tos of the pic­ture book mas­ter’s hap­py home life. It’s said that Eric Car­bone lived in the rather cold Mass­a­chu­setts for 33 years before final­ly mov­ing to warm Flori­da, where he and his wife lived hap­pi­ly ever after in a beach­front vil­la…

   

   

Thanks to this cater­pil­lar (which actu­al­ly has a cake behind it!)

Extra 4: A lit­tle extra about Eric Car­le’s fam­i­ly (mild gos­sip)
There is not much offi­cial infor­ma­tion about Car­l’s fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tion. The fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion is col­laged from arti­cles in var­i­ous media. Please for­give any inac­cu­ra­cies.
Var­i­ous Chi­nese biogra­phies of Carr men­tion his wife as Bar­bara, spelled “Bar­bara Car­le.” How­ev­er, fam­i­ly friends gen­er­al­ly addressed her as Bob­bie, or Bob­bie Car­le. Using her orig­i­nal sur­name would spell her Bob­bie Morrison—the name used in offi­cial news­pa­per reports. For con­ve­nience, I’ll con­tin­ue to use “Bar­bara” below.
Bar­bara was Eric Car­le’s sec­ond wife, but Eric was her first hus­band. She was approx­i­mate­ly nine years younger than Eric, and they mar­ried in 1973. The New York Times report­ed on Bar­bara’s occu­pa­tion as a “for­mer spe­cial edu­ca­tion teacher.” Anoth­er arti­cle explained that Bar­bara had helped to estab­lish and teach at Side-by-Side, a spe­cial edu­ca­tion school designed to help preschool­ers with dis­abil­i­ties enter main­stream learn­ing envi­ron­ments. In 2002, Bar­bara also helped her hus­band estab­lish the Eric Car­le Muse­um of Pic­ture Book Art, demon­strat­ing her ded­i­ca­tion to his wife. How­ev­er, Bar­bara and Eric did not have any chil­dren.
Carl met his first wife in Stuttgart, Ger­many, and they mar­ried around 1952. They lat­er moved to New York and divorced in 1964. Dur­ing this time, they had a son and a daugh­ter. Lat­er reports said that one of them was a masseuse and the oth­er an artist, and nei­ther of them had chil­dren, so Eric has no bio­log­i­cal grand­chil­dren.
Inter­est­ing­ly, Carl once received a book in the mail. The author, a super­mod­el named Emme, ded­i­cat­ed it to Eric Carl because Eric had played a father fig­ure and had a pro­found influ­ence on her dur­ing her child­hood (approx­i­mate­ly 34 years ear­li­er). This was dur­ing a peri­od between Eric’s two mar­riages, when he had a rela­tion­ship with her moth­er. Eric was over­joyed to receive the let­ter. Although Emme was not his bio­log­i­cal daugh­ter, he and Bar­bara were hap­py to treat her as their own. The Carl fam­i­ly was espe­cial­ly delight­ed when they lat­er learned that Emme was going to be a moth­er, as it meant Eric Carl would be a grand­fa­ther! They planned a grand wel­come for the new baby…