Eric Carle

Eric Carle (1929-2021) was an American author and illustrator of picture books, best known for The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1969), whose artwork was made as collage from papers he painted by hand.

He was born on 25 June 1929 in Syracuse, New York, but when he was six his family moved back to Stuttgart, Germany, where he grew up under the Nazi regime. He returned to the United States in 1952, worked as a graphic designer in the promotion department of The New York Times, and in 1956 became art director of a pharmaceutical advertising agency before going freelance in 1963. His break came when Bill Martin Jr. asked him to illustrate Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, published by Henry Holt in 1967.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar followed on 3 June 1969. It began as a mock-up called A Week with Willi Worm, inspired by a hole punch in his studio; his editor Ann Beneduce suggested a caterpillar instead. The book has been translated into more than 70 languages and has sold more than 55 million copies. He went on to write and illustrate more than 70 books, including The Tiny Seed (1970), The Very Busy Spider (1984) and A House for Hermit Crab (1987). With his wife Barbara Morrison he founded The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts, which opened in 2002, and he received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award in 2003. He died in Northampton, Massachusetts, on 23 May 2021.

For collectors. The first edition of The Very Hungry Caterpillar was published in the United States by World Publishing Company in 1969; because die-cut holes were costly to produce in America, the book was originally printed in Japan. Philomel took over US publication in 1981. In Britain the book was published by Hamish Hamilton from 1970 to 1979.