Farm Summer

In the second year of the Second World War — I had just turned 12, my maternal grandmother remembered from her youth a farm girl she had known. Off went a postcard: could Eric spend the summer vacation with her? Yes, came the reply. A small suitcase was packed. I traveled 4 hours by train and walked another 2 to a tiny village consisting of perhaps 8 farms. Maria, my grandmother’s friend, was an elderly unmarried woman living with her 90 year old widowed father, whom I called Grandfather.



Their living quarters, barn and stables were all in the same building, under one roof. They owned 3 cows, 2 pigs, a dozen chickens with a proud rooster and several bee hives in the abutting garden. In the garden grew all their vegetables and fruit that they needed.



There was no indoor plumbing. There was a water pump inside the kitchen. No hot water, no bathtub, no water closet, no cars, no refrigerator. I had a guest bed in the old man’s room. I still remember him snoring dreadfully and getting up in the middle of the night to use the chamber pot that would be emptied in the morning.



Maria worked until midnight baking bread, darning socks, washing and cleaning and then getting up at 4 in the morning to take her old bicycle and pedaling to the nearby forest to pick mushrooms or berries. Not for us, these were washed and carefully packed and delivered by her on the bicycle to the nearest city to be sold to the “rich city folk”.



My summer vacation with Maria and Grandfather will remain one of the most glorious experiences of my youth. Learning to milk a cow. Watching the bees around their hives in Maria’s garden. Searching for eggs in the barn. Picking wild blueberries and cranberries. Feeding noisy pigs. Quietly spending hours in an abandoned stone quarry where I watched frogs and salamanders in puddles of water. Observing the local cheese maker making cheeses. And, of course, enjoying the robust, yet delicious meals.

All this and more in this sheltered and pastoral place while a murderous war was ravaging Europe.

-Eric Carle

Pictures from Portugal

I received many lovely e-mails and letters this spring including these beautiful photographs of pictures from a book created by school children in Portugal.

I hope you will enjoy these too!
Eric Carle

Turning 80

Dear Friends,

Here I am with my mother in 1934 in Syracuse, NY. I was 5 years old when this photograph was taken, and now I am 80 years old.

Many things have happened between then and now, but I feel a strong connection to the child I once was, the child that is still inside. I can still remember while on a walk with my father, holding a lizard in my hands - the way it moved and pushed its head against the insides of my cupped hands; sitting in my Grandmother's lap and understanding her German words but not being able to respond; the support and kindness of my mother who encouraged my creative interests; I remember the light streaming in through the windows of my classroom, which I've thought of as my first experience of beauty.

There are so many moments that have stayed with me, or that come back if I scratch the surface of my memory by looking at an old photograph.

Eric Carle

A Quintet of Books

Sometimes, readers ask me why a number of my books have the word "Very" in the title. After The Very Hungry Caterpillar had been published I wanted to create a “Very” quartet. Why a quartet? I liked the idea of a group. But also, I must admit that I had been taken by the sound of The Alexandria Quartet, written by Lawrence Durrell, which I read a long time ago. The story of which I cannot much recall, but the sound of these three words, The Alexandria Quartet have remained with me. Ideas, or a speck of an idea, come from the darndest places! I proceeded to write and illustrate Spider, Cricket and Firefly and completed my quartet. But what should happen? A tiny voice whispered to me “quintet” And so the Click Beetle was born.

However, each "Very" book came about in a different way. The Very Hungry Caterpillar had a sort of accidental beginning in that I was punching holes into a stack of papers. I knew right away that the spider in The Very Busy Spider would be the hero, but it took me a long time to come up with the idea of a raised web. (In the first book the hole was the given - the caterpillar followed. In the second book, the spider was the given - the raised web followed.) With The Very Quiet Cricket, my third Very book, I knew from the beginning about the insect and the sound. In my fourth Very book, The Very Lonely Firely, I knew I wanted a different kind of surprise at the end. And with The Very Clumsy Click Beetle, the fifth book in my quintet, the theme of perseverance, that one must try and try again, was where I began.

Now I have a complete quintet. Five movements exploring a theme. I sometimes feel like a composer of music - and why not!

I hope you have enjoyed these thoughts on my Very books and my musings on how these compositions came to life. Be it crickets or humans, we can only make music when the circumstances are right. I didn't invent that, I only observed it.

Eric Carle

All the Colors

Dear Friends,

A recent burst of color in my neighborhood!

Eric Carle

Some thoughts on LOOKING and SEEING

Dear Friends,

Art is often thought of as a painting or sculpture in a museum. And while this is true, it is only partially so. We tend to overlook things of beauty that surround us in our daily lives. A spider web, the bark of a tree, the surface of a rock. And beauty is not only found in nature, look closely at a screw imbedded in a piece of rusty steel, a broken windowpane, the bristles of a hardened paint brush, a segment of colorful graffiti on a concrete wall, which, by the way, tells us that art and beauty are in the eyes of the beholder and may not be considered “beautiful”.

In order to heighten one’s sense of looking and seeing try cutting a square window, about 15 cm, into a piece of sturdy paper and look through it. Hold it close or at arm’s length and look at all kinds of things around you.



You’ll be surprised how different the same object will look when viewed through the frame held up close or from a distance.

Look close up at the surface of the sidewalk, a piece of sandpaper, a weathered piece of wood



Or look at the leaves of a tree or bush.



Have you ever noticed how many shapes and sizes and colors leaves have?

Look up at a cloud. Let it drift by or move along with it.



What you see is a strange and beautiful world which you may not have been aware of.

By framing an image that way and isolating it from its usual surrounding it often takes on a different quality or meaning.

By now you understand what I am trying to express. There are so many things to look at and see differently from what we are used to.

In a museum, I like to look closely at a large masterpiece and study a very small area of brush strokes.



I am fascinated by the small world of brush strokes isolated from the painting itself. Try it sometime and you too will be amazed.

Eric Carle

ABSTRACT ART

Dear Friends,

I sometimes like to create abstract pieces using my painted tissue paper sheets, as well as other materials such as silk fabric, plate glass, plastic sheathing and aluminum foil. I continue to create pieces in my studio, little works that for one reason or another capture my attention. I thought you might like to see an example of this kind of art including an Ingo Maurer ceiling lamp in my home that I decorated using pieces of my painted papers!

Eric Carle