Friday, February 06, 2009

No Mid-Life Crisis for the Hungry Caterpillar

Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar is celebrating its 40th birthday this spring! Publisher's Weekly has published an article, Still Hungry After All These Years, that I commend to all fans of Carle and his caterpillar.

Having read The Art of Eric Carle a couple of years ago, I already knew a good bit of the story behind his early career, but I still learned (or re-learned) some new things. I particularly got a chuckle out of hearing that he got the idea for the Hungry Caterpillar one day while hole punching some papers. Just goes to show...you never know when even a mundane activity can spark something wonderful and creative.

Philomel Books is readying the first ever pop-up version of the book for a March release, so if you know any toddlers/preschoolers having birthdays this spring, you might want to put that on your gift list. A slew of other anniversary activities are being planned by the Penguin Young Readers Group. It's nice to know the Caterpillar is turning 40 in style.

3 comments:

Erin said...

Ooh, a pop-up version would be really cool! Eric Carle has certainly had an illustrious career. Nathan especially loved his books; I think his favorite was The Very Quiet Cricket. That's funny that a hole-punch inspired Carle's most famous book! Inspiration pops up in all sorts of funny places...

Beth said...

Oh we love The Very Quiet Cricket. It's one of the stories on a video version we have of several of Carle's books, and the narration, voices and music are particularly well done on that one (though good on all of them). Caterpillar was the sweet girl's first "favorite" book, and she still goes through seasons when she wants us to read lots of Eric Carle. I'm glad, because I never seem to get tired of him either!

Erin said...

This was just a question on Jeopardy! Something like "This Eric Carle character ate the following: *list of food in the book*". And no one got it!