Eric Carle

“With many of my books I attempt to bridge the gap between the home and school. To me home represents, or should represent; warmth, security, toys, holding hands, being held. School is a strange and new place for a child. Will it be a happy place? There are new people, a teacher, classmates—will they be friendly?”
Eric Carle

Eric Carle was born in USA on 1929 and he is an American designer, illustrator, and writer of children's books. He has written and illustrated more than 70 books.

Eric Carle´s pictures are considered by many as art and his works are very easily recognizable as he created it in collage technique by using hand-painted papers which he cuts and layers to form bright and colourful pictures. He also added in some books die-cut pages to make them more attractive and many other techniques like for an instance, twinkling lights in some pages to do an impression of a real firefly or the real sound of a cricket. For more information about how Carle creates his pictures access here

He usually focused on themes related to nature as it´s an interest shared by most small children. In this way, his books are not only entertaining but also educational as the children have the opportunity to learn something about the world around them.

The point of his great success, apart from his artwork, is that when Carle writes, he tries to recognize children´s feelings and creativity, and also to stimulate their intellectual growth.

His most popular book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar which is a picture book in where a caterpillar eats his way through a wide variety of food before pupating and emerging as a butterfly.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar include distinctive collage illustrations, “eaten” holes in the pages and very simple text with educational themes – counting, the days of the week, foods, and a butterfly's life stages.
It has been described as having sold the equivalent of a copy per minute since its publication. For more info access here