SOURCE CITATION
"Eric Carle." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
Photograph provided by Penguin Young Readers Group.

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Even as a child, Eric Carle was fascinated by drawing. "Until I was six years old I lived in Syracuse, New York, where I went to kindergarten. I remember happy days with large sheets of paper, bright colors and wide brushes!" the author once observed. Just after Carle started first grade, his family moved to Stuttgart, Germany. His father's mother had pleaded for the family to return to their native country. In a visit to America, Carle's grandmother "promised gifts and she told them about the rising leader, Adolf Hitler, and claimed that he had eliminated unemployment, inflation, and hunger," Carle once recalled. "Her own children ignored her pleas, but in my mother the seed of homesickness had been planted."

"When I got to Germany I had to learn two languages and how to get along in a country that was far different from the one I was used to," Carle said in Famous Children's Authors. "Often I wished that a bridge could be built from Germany to America so I could get back home."

"Adjusting to school in his new country was very hard for Carle, even though he soon forgot his English and was speaking German fluently. When he was six, he began attending grammar school in Stuttgart. "School was strict," Carle once recalled, and "corporal punishment not excluded. I also remember receiving a small piece of paper, a hard pencil and an eraser with the warning not to make mistakes." On his third day, Carle became the first in his class to get a whipping. For a small mistake, he received three whacks on each hand.

"Carle's new life in Germany wasn't all troubles. Carle began making many friends at school, becoming popular because he was an American. He had a helpful art teacher who praised him for his drawings. He also had many relatives nearby, and often spent entire weekends with his aunt and uncle in their old house: "At the door my aunt would hug and kiss me, and push me into their kitchen to stuff me with goodies, fearing that I was near starvation," the author once related. Next "I would go into my uncle's studio, a small unused bedroom, sit down next to him, and listen to the stories he often had to tell."

"But, along with these fond memories, Carle recalled an event that was to change history. "On my way to school I often passed a small department store on the Adolf Hitler Strasse," he once observed. "Occasionally I had bought a toy there for myself, or some thread or canning jars for my mother. But one day as I passed, clothing, furniture, hardware, toys, and much more lay strewn and torn beyond the shattered windows. A large Star of David had been painted roughly across a broken door that was off its hinges. The damaged building was cordoned off, and a policeman ordered me to move on, to be on my way to school. This was the so-called Crystal Night, 1938, when open anti-Semitism erupted in Nazi Germany."

"Soon afterward World War II broke out, and Carle's father was drafted into the German Army. "He was away for eight years and was a prisoner of war in Russia part of the time," Carle related in Famous Children's Authors. "I missed my father very much." During the early years of the war, Germany was successful and the boy was impressed by the many German soldiers returning from victory. As Carle once observed, he became "a loyal German patriot, along with all his German-born schoolmates. Hitler's victories (were) intoxicating."

"But Germany's fortunes changed and Allied forces started attacking Stuttgart, a major target. Even though Carle's family strengthened their basement with steel doors, it wasn't safe from the bombs falling on the city. The people began digging tunnels, which they called stollen, around the area. Carle and his family were forced to take shelter there, sometimes several times a night. For the last eighteen months of the war, Carle and his schoolmates were sent to a small town in the southwest of Germany to be safe from the bombing raids.

"The war ended with Germany's surrender in 1945. Still Carle's family heard nothing about his father's whereabouts. Eventually rumors brought them word that he was in Russia, and in 1946 they finally received a note saying he was alive and would return soon. He arrived home in late 1947, sick and weighing just eighty pounds. Eight years away had changed his father so much, Carle once stated, that he "would never really recover or 'belong' to our family again." The closeness he and his father had shared was gone, but Carle still "recalled the happiness he had offered to me in my early childhood, when he passed on to me his dreams which he had not been able to fulfill for himself."

"Meanwhile, Carle had begun art studies at the Akademie der bildenden Künste with Professor Ernst Schneidler. Because the professor's reputation was so great, as one of the professor's students Carle found a job easily after graduation. Even before he finished his studies he began working for a local American information center, designing posters. By 1952, the young artist had gained enough experience and had created enough artwork to feel confident about returning to the United States, something he knew he would do ever since his first day in Germany.

"In 1952 Carle arrived in New York City, and within two weeks he landed a job with New York Times. Carle had only been working for five months when the U.S. Army recruited him, and he began two years in the service. He was soon stationed with an army unit back in Stuttgart, where he was allowed to spend nights and weekends at his parent's house. During this time, Carle met and married his first wife, Dorothea. After his discharge, the couple returned to New York, and there they had two children, Cirsten and Rolf.

"Carle worked for almost ten years as a designer and art director before deciding to change his surroundings. In 1963, Carle quit his full-time company job to begin working as a freelance artist. As he once related, "I had come to the conclusion that I didn't want to sit in meetings, write memos, entertain clients, and catch commuter trains. I simply wanted to create pictures."

"Carle first became interested in children's literature when he was asked to do illustrations for a series of books by Bill Martin. "I found Bill's approach to the world of the preschool and first grade child very stimulating; it reawakened in me struggles of my own childhood," Carle commented to Delores R. Klingberg in Language Arts. Remembering his difficult early schooldays in Germany, Carle added that the conflicts from that time "remained hidden until the opportunity and insight presented themselves. Through my work with Bill Martin, an unfinished area of my own growing up had been touched."

""I didn't realize it clearly then, but my life was beginning to move onto its true course," Carle once said. "The long, dark time of growing up in wartime Germany, the cruelly enforced discipline of my school years there, the dutifully performed work at my jobs in advertising--all these were finally losing their rigid grip on me. The child inside me--who had been so suddenly and sharply uprooted and repressed--was beginning to come joyfully back to life."

""It was then that I met Ann Beneduce (then editor with World), and with her kind help and understanding I created my first two books: 1, 2, 3 to the Zoo and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, " Carle once observed. "A mixture of negative and positive influences had led to a fruitful expression."

"Both of Carle's first books contain bold collage pictures and feature many different animals. The author recalled in a Books for Keeps article that his early years with his father taught him about nature. "We used to go for long walks in the countryside together, and he would peel back tree bark to show me what was underneath it, lift rocks to reveal the insects. As a result, I have an abiding love and affection for small, insignificant animals."

"1, 2, 3 to the Zoo follows several animals on their train trip to live in a zoo, with a tiny mouse observing each car. The book is full of "superb paintings of animals, bold, lively, handsome, spreading over big double-spread pages," Adele McRae of the Christian Science Monitor wrote. "(Carle's) elephant is all magnificent power, his giraffes a precision of delicacy, his monkeys a tangle of liveliness. This is a book to grow with its owner. The tiny mouse lurking in every picture may remain invisible to the smallest reader and, as the title implies, the book is waiting to teach the art of counting.

"Carle's award-winning book The Very Hungry Caterpillar was published in 1969. "I was just playfully punching holes in a stack of paper," the author told Molly McQuade of Publishers Weekly, "and I thought to myself, 'This could've been done by a bookworm.' From that came a caterpillar."

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar "tells the story of a caterpillar's life-cycle, from egg to butterfly," as John A. Cunliffe described it in Children's Book Review. "He eats through a great many things on the way--one apple on Monday, two pears on Tuesday, and so on, to a list of ten exotic items on Saturday--and the book's delight, and originality, lie in the way in which these cumulative items

"are shown." In addition, the critic noted, "the text is brief and simple, and has a satisfying cumulative effect that neatly matches the pictures, which are large and bold, in brilliant colours and crisp forms set against the white page, mainly achieved by the use of collage. This book has a direct appeal, true simplicity, and a strong play element that will endear it to the hearts of all children from about eight downwards. Their elder brothers and sisters, not to mention their parents, will find delight in it too, for such an outstanding book has a universal appeal."

"Not only does Caterpillar contain brightly colored shapes designed to appeal to young children, it also has holes in the pages which match the path of the caterpillar. As Carle explained in Books for Your Children, the holes in Caterpillar "are a bridge from toy to book, from plaything, from the touching to understanding. . . . In the very young child the thought travels mightily fast from fingertips to brain. This book has many layers. There is fun, nonsense, colour, surprise. There is learning, but if the child ignores the learning part, let him, it's OK. Someday he'll hit upon it by himself. That is the way we learn." Caterpillar remains Carle's most widely known and loved book, with translations into twenty-three languages.

"Carle's book Do You Want to Be My Friend?, published in 1971, is his own favorite, for he believes friendship is very important to the very young. Carle once related how a childhood friend from Syracuse wrote him letters after he moved to Germany. "Twenty years later, I went to his door unannounced and asked him, 'Do you know me?' Without a moment's hesitation, he answered, 'You're Eric!' Now, over fifty years later, I still have his precious letter(s). In my heart, I have dedicated my book Do You Want to Be My Friend? to this first and deeply felt friendship."

"Like 1, 2, 3 to the Zoo, Do You Want to Be My Friend? is a picture book filled with bright and colorful animals. The only words in the story are the title question "Do you want to be my friend?" spoken by a lonely mouse, and a joyful "yes" from the new friend he finally discovers. Calling it "a perfect picture book for a small child," Washington Post Book World contributor Polly Goodwin added that Do You Want to Be My Friend? "offers a splendid opportunity for a pre-reader, with a little initial help, to create his own story based on the brilliantly colored, wonderfully expressive pictures."

"The Rooster Who Set out to See the World, later published as Rooster's off to See the World, is another "brilliantly colored picture story that does double duty as a counting book," Lillian N. Gerhardt said in Library Journal. The story follows a rooster who decides to travel and see the world. As he travels, he adds friends in twos, threes, fours, and fives. "The sums are presented pictorially in the corners of the page," Marcus Crouch of Junior Bookshelf noted, but this doesn't distract from Carle's "exquisitely drawn coloured pictures. Mr. Carle is still the best of all artists for the very young," Crouch concluded.

"Carle introduces another innovation in The Grouchy Ladybug: the pages grow in size as larger and larger animals appear on them. The story follows a bad-tempered ladybug as she challenges different creatures, starting with other insects and ending with the whale whose cut-out tail slaps her back to her home leaf. While Carle presents such instructive concepts as time and size, "this book is chiefly a pleasure to read and to look at," Caroline Moorhead wrote in the Times Educational Supplement, "with its cross and good-natured ladybirds . . . and its deep-toned illustrations of animals."

"The Very Busy Spider follows a spider who spends her day spinning a web which grows larger with each page. Although she is interrupted by a number of farm animals, the spider continues her work until the web is finished and she catches the fly that has been bothering the other animals. Because the web and fly are raised above the page so that they can be felt, the book "is obviously of value to the visually handicapped," as Julia Eccleshare commented in the Times Literary Supplement. Denise M. Wilms agreed, writing in Booklist that "this good-looking picture book has just the ingredients" to become an "instant classic." Following along similar patterns are The Very Quiet Cricket, which tells the triumphant tale of a cricket who finally learns

"to rub his wings together to make a sound--reproduced via a battery-aided computer chip on the final page of the book; The Very Lonely Firefly, about another lovable insect who, in its quest for illuminated buddies, mistakes headlights, fireworks, even a flashlight for other fireflies before it finally finds its own kind on the final page of the book, which is illuminated with battery-powered twinkling lights; and The Very Clumsy Click Beetle, about a peculiar insect who must learn to jump in the air in order to move once it has fallen on its back.

"In addition to original stories, Carle has also written his own versions of familiar children's works, such as Grimm's fairy tales, Aesop's fables, and Hans Christian Andersen's stories. But whatever their topic, all of Carle's works are educational tools that interest children with their bold, imaginative drawings and whimsical presentations. "We underestimate children," Carle said in an Early Years interview. "They have tremendous capacities for learning." In November of 2002, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art opened in Amherst, Massachusetts. The 40,000-square-foot museum is situated on 7.5 acres and is endowed in part by the Eric and Barbara Carle Foundation, Penguin Putnam Inc., and HarperCollins. The museum contains a general collection, sponsors traveling exhibitions, and houses a theater that stages shows for children. The purpose of the museum, according to a brochure quoted by Publishers Weekly writer Sally Lodge, is "to delight, entertain, surprise and educate." Founding director Nick Clarke told Lodge that "We recognize that children learn to read through picture books, where there is a marriage of text and image." He went on to add: "But eventually the literacy becomes primarily textual and the visual literacy gets left behind. So one of the missions of the museum is to give people the tools and opportunity to reinstate it."

"This interest in education, fired by his own early experience, has been the driving force behind Carle's books, as he declared in Books for Keeps. "There are two major traumas in anyone's life, being born and going to school for the first time. . . . The transition for me from home to school was so horrible, and I want to make that transition better and easier for children by providing them with books which help to 'sweeten' the educational process." By including holes, cutouts, changing surfaces, and moving parts, Carle creates works that are both toys--things to be touched and played with--and books.

""But there is something else," the artist remarked in Books for Keeps. "So many 'learning' books for the young leave out the emotional side of life. I want to keep it in. There is a feeling, an emotional level quite consciously in each of my books. The emotion and feeling were all left out of my education in Germany, and that's why I think it's so important for me now." Indeed, in Flora and the Tiger: Nineteen Very Short Stories from My Life, his first book for older children, Carle writes directly about sensations and feelings from his own childhood--such as the simple yet intimate act of holding his father's hand on their long walks through the countryside in Germany. Booklist reviewer Hazel Rochman noted that the book's quiet appeal is enhanced by Carle's ability to recapture the child's perspective through sensory detail, and added that his collage illustrations "have never been more expressive" than in those with which he accompanies each vignette.

"But sheer fun is also important to Carle. As he commented in Books for Keeps, "I also think of myself as an entertainer now. . . . Entertainment is an important part of books for the young." Elaborating in Books for Your Children, Carle added "I would like to make childhood something special and joyous, something that the child does not want to get over with fast, something that immunises him from such warnings as 'time to grow up,' 'be mature' and 'don't act like a child.'"

"The Art of Eric Carle, an overview of the author/illustrator's career, was welcomed as an inviting celebration of this esteemed artist's work; in addition to examples of Carle's art, the book includes an autobiographical essay and a photo essay on his innovative collage technique. Indeed, Carle's innovations have continued. With his 2000 title, Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too?, Carle asks this question about ten other animals, to show that all animals have mothers. Reviewing the title in Booklist, Tim Arnold noted, "Almost no author/illustrator over the past thirty years has played a more prominent role in the literary lives of preschoolers than Eric Carle." Arnold further commented, "His large, inviting graphic animals have consistently delighted and taught children during early stages of development. This latest effort is no exception." Whatever their topic, all of Carle's works are educational tools that interest children with their bold, imaginative drawings and whimsical presentations.

"I've had children come to me and say, 'I can do that!,' and I'm highly complimented," the author told McQuade in the Publishers Weekly interview. "Both the content and the art in my books reflect the child in me--with the help of the grownup." Indeed, as Donnarae MacCann and Olga Richard claimed in Wilson Library Bulletin, "Eric Carle is like a half dozen creative people rolled into one." Because of Carle's skill in writing for pre-schoolers, his "innovativeness and artistic discipline," and his ability to turn a book into a toy, the critics concluded, "a child reared on such books will blossom into a confirmed bibliophile." And, as Carle told Early Years, this would fulfill the one hope he has for all his books: "I would wish my books could have an effect on every child, every last one of them."

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born June 25, 1929, in Syracuse, NY; son of Erich W. (a civil servant) and Johanna (Ölschlaeger) Carle; married Dorothea Wohlenberg, June, 1954 (divorced, 1964); married Barbara Morrison, June, 1973; children: (first marriage) Cirsten, Rolf. Education: Graduated from Akademie der bildenden Künste, Stuttgart, Germany, 1950. Memberships: Authors League of America. Addresses: Home--231 Crescent St., Northampton, MA 01060.

CAREER
U.S. Information Center, Stuttgart, Germany, poster designer, 1950-52; New York Times, New York, NY, graphic designer, 1952-56; L. W. Frohlich & Co., New York City, art director, 1956-63; freelance writer, illustrator, and designer, 1963--. Guest instructor, Pratt Institute, 1964. Founder, Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, MA. Military service: U.S. Army, 1952-54.