Did you read The Very Hungry Caterpillar as a kid?
I’ve recently learned that it sold more than 50 million copies and has been translated into 70 languages - so there’s a good chance you’ve seen it (even if you haven’t read it).
I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar as a child, and to my own children - but I can’t say that I ever knew anything about the book’s author, Eric Carle. But reading that he passed away last month made me curious about who he was.
And I couldn’t believe what I learned.
The man who wrote such colorful, fun books for children had a grim, dark childhood in Nazi Germany. After the war, he moved to the US, and in the mid-1960s was working as a graphic designer in advertising in New York City.
Although he enjoyed the job, he found himself wanting more.
“All too often I had to go out with clients, have dinner and drinks with them, attend meetings, and there was all the backstabbing and office intrigue.
It just hit me one day that I wanted to make pictures,” he said.
So he left advertising.
Then one day in 1969, he was bored.
He took a stack of paper and a hole-punch and playfully punched holes.
He wasn’t trying to write a book at that moment, but when he looked at the papers with holes punched in them, it gave him an idea.
“Straight away I thought of a book worm,” he said.
He wrote a children’s story about a gluttonous worm named Willi, who ate a lot, felt sick, and then went to sleep.
But the story didn’t really have an ending.
Carle took his idea for ‘Willi the Worm’ to editor Ann Beneduce. She knew the picture book genre well, and wasn’t sold on the idea of a book about a worm. She suggested a caterpillar instead.
That instantly gave Carle the idea for a butterfly - and an ending for a story of transformation that would become The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Carle’s creative idea of punching holes in the pages of a book (and thus turning a book into a toy) was different, but it led to a major problem when it came time to get the book printed.
“I couldn’t find anyone in the US who could manufacture this book, with all its ingeniously die-cut pages, and irregular bindings,” Benduce said.
But fortunately for Carle, he had a champion in his editor.
Beneduce was determined to get Carle’s book published, and while visiting Japan, she showed it to Japanese publishers. One publisher, Hiroshi Imamura, liked it so much he agreed to print it.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar hit shelves on 3 June 1969 - just before Carle’s 40th birthday.
The simple but everlasting tale - told in just 224 words - became a huge hit.
And just as the caterpillar transformed, so did Carle’s career. Although the caterpillar may be his most famous work, over the course of six decades, Carle wrote more than 70 children’s books and sold more than 170 million copies.
You can read more about Carle’s life here.
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-Beth