Background and career
Eric Carle (June 25, 1929 – May 23, 2021) was an American author, designer and illustrator of children's books. His picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, first published in 1969, has been translated into more than 70 languages and sold more than 55 million copies. Carle illustrated over 70 children's books, most of which he also wrote. His books have sold more than 170 million copies around the world.
Carle was born on June 25, 1929, in Syracuse, New York, to German immigrants: Johanna (née Oelschläger) and Erich W. Carle, a former civil servant. He spent his earliest years immersed in nature and making art, and had happy memories of school—especially art class, a "sun-filled room, large sheets of paper, colourful paints and fat brushes." But when he was six years old, his mother, homesick for Germany, led the family back to Stuttgart. Growing up in Germany, then in thrall to the Nazi regime, was not easy for Carle. Schools were strict, paper rationed, and corporal punishment the norm. The Nazis banned modern art as "degenerate." But when Carle was around 12, a daring teacher, Friedrich Krauss, exposed him to the works of Klee, Matisse and Picasso, artists who would be formative influences. At the start of World War II, Carle's father was drafted into the German Army. The following year, the Allies began the bombing of Stuttgart, a series of 53 air raids that would last four and a half years. Carle and his family spent nights in underground shelters, their house surrounded by ruins. In 1943, students in Carle's school were evacuated to the remote Black Forest town of Schwenningen, where he was assigned to live with another family. As the Nazis' fortunes waned, he was conscripted, at 15, to dig trenches on the Siegfried Line:
"The first day three people were killed a few feet away. Not children—Russian prisoners or something. The nurses came and started crying. And in Stuttgart, our home town, our house was the only one standing. When I say standing, I mean the roof and windows are gone, and the doors. And ... well, there you are." Carle's father was taken prisoner by the Soviet forces when Germany capitulated in May 1945. He returned home in late 1947, weighing 85 pounds (39 kg; 6.1 st). Carle, who had not seen his father for eight years, recalled that his father returned a broken man, "psychologically, physically devastated." After the war Carle enrolled in and graduated from the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, where he studied graphic design and color theory with Bauhaus-trained artists and typography under influential book designer F. H. Ernst Schneidler.
Carle began his career designing posters for events presented by Amerika Haus, a post-war cultural exchange program, and working as an art director for the fashion magazine Schwabe: Der neue schnitt. Carle returned to the US in 1952 with only $40 in his pocket. His portfolio impressed Leo Lionni, then art director of Fortune, who referred him to the promotion department of The New York Times. But after five months, Carle was drafted into the US Army and sent back to Germany with the Second Armored Division, where he worked as a mail clerk. After his discharge, Carle returned to his job at The New York Times. In 1956 he became the art director of L.W. Frohlich, a pharmaceutical advertising agency.
In 1963, Carle went freelance, continuing to create eye-catching ads while also designing book and LP covers. In 1965 he illustrated his first book, Red-Flannel Hash and Shoo-Fly Pie: American Regional Foods and Festivals by Lila Perl, using the same linocut technique he had used at the Times. Its editor, Ann Beneduce, would become Carle's. An ad for Chlor-Trimeton featuring a lobster collaged from tissue paper caught the eye of educator and author Bill Martin Jr., who asked Carle to collaborate on a picture book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? which was published by Henry Holt & Co. in 1967. Thus began Carle's career as a children's book illustrator, and soon he was writing and illustrating his own stories, beginning with 1, 2, 3 to the Zoo and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which would become a massive bestseller. According to its publisher, Penguin Random House, a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar is sold every 30 seconds. Carle's artwork was created by collage, using hand-painted papers that he cut and layered to form bright and colorful images. Many of Carle's books have an added dimension—die-cut pages, twinkling lights in The Very Lonely Firefly, even the sound of a cricket's song in The Very Quiet Cricket. His stories were usually drawn from nature and were inspired by the walks he would take with his father:
"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.” Inspired by Japanese museums of picture book art, Carle and his second wife, Barbara Morrison, founded The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, a 44,000 sq ft (4,100 m2) museum devoted to the art of children's books in Amherst, Massachusetts, adjacent to Hampshire College. According to the museum, it has had over one million visitors since it opened its doors in 2002.
