Carle Honors 2011

The Carle Honors is a very special tradition now. It is The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art's annual celebration and award ceremony and this year's was as delightful as ever and very meaningful to the recipients of the awards, the Museum board of directors and staff, Bobbie and myself and all who care about the Museum. This year the Carle Honors were given to Michael Di Capua (Mentor), Jeanne Steig (Angel), Karen Nelson Hoyle (Bridge) and Lois Ehlert (Artist). Here's a photo taken during the award ceremony that captures the beauty of the building where the elegant event was held for the second time, Guastavino's built under the 59th Street bridge in New York City.


Next year the Museum will be 10 years old and Nancy Schön, who was a Carle Honor recipient in 2010, unveiled her beautiful bronze maquette of The Very Hungry Caterpillar which will be available for sale as part of the Museum's anniversary year. Here I am saying hello to my good friend!



Photos by Johnny Wolf Photography (c) 2011 The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art

The Artist who Painted a Blue Horse

Dear Friends,

I am very happy to share this video about my new book, The Artist who Painted a Blue Horse which is an homage to the Expressionist painter Franz Marc. I hope you will enjoy it!

I will be signing copies of Blue Horse at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art on Sunday, September 25 at 1:00 PM and at the following locations in New York and New Jersey:

Saturday, October 1
11 AM-12:30 PM - Books, Bytes and Beyond
197 Rock Road
Glen Rock, NJ 07452

Monday, October 3
5:30 PM - Barnes & Noble, Union Square
33 East 17th Street
NY, NY 10003

Hope to see you at one of these events if you are in the area.
Best wishes,
Eric Carle

The last few lazy days of Summer

Kaisei-sha exhibition at Fukuoka Asia Museum

These photos are of an exhibit currently on at the Fukuoka Asia Museum in Japan. Many thanks to my Japanese publisher Kaisei-sha for all that they did to make this show possible. I am delighted by the wall murals and the scale of the art work. I hope you will enjoy these as much as I do!

Remembering Tock

I was recently given these photos of our beloved Tock, the white Samoyed (on left in above photo) who was our dog a long time ago. Tock was a very special dog and she had a good dog friend named Fluffy, (also in these photos) who belonged to our neighbor when we lived in the beautiful hills of western Massachusetts.


These photos bring back many happy memories of our days with Tock who is incidentally named after the dog in The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (Norton is a friend of ours).



This is a tissue paper collage of Tock that I made for Bobbie. We both loved Tock and remember her with great fondness.

Massachusetts in July

It was a busy and exciting time in western Massachusetts where we spent the past 10 days visiting with friends and making my annual appearance at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art for a book signing. More than 400 people came from all over the U.S. and the world including visitors from Kenya, Japan, Costa Rica, Kansas, Florida, France and Korea. It was a great day saying hello and signing books.


Bobbie and I were also delighted to be at the Museum the night before the signing event, to remember Leo Lionni and to celebrate the unveiling of his beautiful sculpture which is now on view in the Museum's great hall. You must come and see it!

Photo credit: Kristin Angel

Friendship

Do You Want to Be My Friend? which was published forty years ago in 1971 is my favorite book. It has only eight words. But it's not a simple book. It's a guessing game: what animal is attached to each tail? And a mystery: why is there a green border on the bottom of every page? And it is a story about friendship. Friendship is very important to children, adults sometimes forget that.


When I was six years old my parents and I moved from Syracuse NY, where I was born, to Germany. Almost daily, I would ask them "When are we going home?"


Soon after our move to Germany, I received a letter from my friend Carlton Mayer in Syracuse. "Dear Eric," he wrote. "I would licke to see you so bad wen are you koming back again?" Twenty years later, I arrived at his doorstep and he recognized me. "You're Eric!" he said. I still have his precious letter and in my heart Do You Want to Be My Friend? is for Carlton.