The Very Hungry Caterpillar Day!

I am delighted and honored to tell you that March 20th this year is the 3rd annual Very Hungry Caterpillar Day! To celebrate, events and programs are being planned around the country in schools, libraries and bookstores.

In March and April, The Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia will be performing their wonderful black light puppetry productions based on my stories in various theaters around the U.S.

Also, The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is holding a day of activities including a visit from the caterpillar himself!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar will also be making appearances at additional boosktores and other locations. You can find out more at the Penguin USA web site

Thank you everyone for celebrating this day!

REJECTS

Sometimes children will write to me and ask if I ever make mistakes when I’m creating illustrations. There are no mistakes, I explain. It is all useful in some way; all a part of the creative process. However, it is true that some pictures don’t belong in a book, for one reason or another. Somebody else might not think so. But for me, it’s a very personal decision and I have high standards for my own work.

Here is an example of alternative art for my book Animals, Animals. The first pelican I created for this book had a dark, brown background.



Many of the pictures that I create for a book, I would say almost a third, don’t make it into the actual book. But this doesn’t mean that the individual pieces are uninteresting or unsuccessful. What matters the most to me is the unity of effect in the entire book; how all of the pictures work together to create a whole feel or flow that is consistent throughout. But even the work I choose not to include is interesting to me and I keep it for archival purposes.

The final art work as you can see, has a much lighter, green background and white space, which you might notice is consistent with many of the pictures in this book.

Think BIG

When I was starting out doing freelance work in the late 1960's, after my stint as an ad executive, and before I had started to make books for children, I created this brochure to promote my work. It is a folded brochure and on the cover is a tiny ladybug who is saying: "THINK SMALL". Inside there is the image of a very large whale who is saying: "think big". The brochure did get some attention from publishers. It was a project I enjoyed working on and feel it is not unrelated to the books I would soon start to create.

Happy Valentine's Day

Tomie & Me

You might like to read this conversation between myself and fellow picture book artist and author Tomie DePaola!

Happy Holidays

Dear Friends,

Have a wonderful, colorful and happy holiday season
and all the best wishes for 2011!

Peace to all,
Eric Carle

"One Book, One Osaka"

I am delighted to share that The Very Hungry Caterpillar was chosen in Osaka, Japan as the best children's book by an organization called "One Book, One Osaka." Our long-time publisher in Japan sent us photos from an event last month at a library in Osaka where more than 1300 people came to a reading of a VERY large edition of the book. I am honored to have my book selected and have very fond memories of my visits to Japan. Thank you friends in Osaka!