The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle > Reviews > A well-loved children's classic

Author's product rating:   

Would you listen to it again?	Absolutely
Story	Good
Characters	Good
Listenability	Once you start it, you won't be able to switch it off!

Advantages:	One to return to again and again (and again .  .  .  .  .  . )
Disadvantages:	None

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

"In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf…."

I can recite the whole thing (well, maybe getting a little confused with the order of the different foods) and I bet I'm far from the only one! The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been around for a loooong time - nearly as long as I have, in fact, and that's ages - and is rightly regarded as a children's classic, which has been translated into over 50 languages. Apparently, a copy is sold every 57 seconds… I don't remember the book from my own childhood, but both my son and my daughter have loved it.

Even George W Bush has listed the book among his favourites from when he was growing up… a statement which raised a few eyebrows as he was, in fact, twenty-three when the book was first published in 1969.

~The Author~

Author and illustrator Eric Carle was born in 1929 - The Very Hungry Caterpillar is his best known book, but he has also written and illustrated many others, over 70 in total. Carle was born in Syracuse, New York to German emigrant parents, but moved to Germany with his parents at the age of six, where he later attended art school in Stuttgart. Carle returned to the USA in 1952 with only $40 to his name, and found a job as a graphic designer at the New York Times. He was drafted into the US Army during the Korean War. Subsequently Carle worked as the art director of an advertising agency for many years.

Carle's writing and illustrating career began with a collaboration with author Bill Martin Jr, who, having noticed an illustration Carle had created for an advert, asked him to illustrate a story. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? became a bestseller and is still in print today. Soon, Carle began to write and illustrate his own stories.

Carle still lives in the USA and, with his wife Bobbie, founded the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Art, a museum devoted to children's books in Amherst, Massachussetts.

~The Book~

As with Carle's other books, The Very Hungry Caterpillar is illustrated in a distinctive and very recognisable style, using a collage technique in which hand-painted papers are cut and layered to produce rich, colourful images. Many of his books, including this one, draw upon his love of nature, a fascination which is shared by many young children.

Carle has said: "When I was a small boy, my father would take me on walks across meadows and through woods. He would lift a stone or peel back the bark of a tree and show me the living things that scurried about. He'd tell me about the life cycles of this or that small creature and then he would carefully put the little creature back into its home. I think in my books I honour my father by writing about small living things. And in a way I recapture those happy times."

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a simple story following the life cycle of a caterpillar from egg to butterfly, in the course of which it eats everything it can find, gets fatter and fatter, turns into a cocoon (of which more later) and subsequently a butterfly… however there are many other learning opportunities along the way, including the numbers one to five, the days of the week, and various different types of food. The holes in the pages as the caterpillar munches its way through apples, pears etc encourage little fingers to explore. (Our copy is an indestructible board book, which I would highly recommend for younger children!)

The book uses simple words and has a rhythm which lends itself to reading aloud… hence the reason I can easily recite the whole thing from memory! Well, and the fact that I have now read it aloud approximately five billion times…

Apparently, the book's original title was to have been A Week With Willi Worm, featuring a green bookworm called Willi. However, Carle's editor suggested that a worm would not be the most loveable of characters and Willi was subsequently metamorphosed into the famous caterpillar.

Some people have asked why the caterpillar emerges from a cocoon, rather than a chrysalis as one might suppose. Here's Carle's response: "That's a good question. Here's the scientific explanation: In most cases a butterfly does come from a chrysalis, but not all. There's a rare genus called Parnassian, that pupates in a cocoon. These butterflies live in the Pacific Northwest, in Siberia, and as far away as North Korea and the northern islands of Japan.
And here's my unscientific explanation: My caterpillar is very unusual. As you know caterpillars don't eat lollipops and ice cream, so you won't find my caterpillar in any field guides. But also, when I was a small boy, my father would say, "Eric, come out of your cocoon." He meant I should open up and be receptive to the world around me. For me, it would not sound right to say, ."Come out of your chrysalis." And so poetry won over science."

The book is widely available in various formats - paper, board book, giant board book, etc - there's even a gift set with a furry caterpillar toy! And yes, you can buy it on audio CD, although contrary to what Ciao seems to think that'snot the format I'm actually reviewing.....Our board book edition is available new for £5.99.