Eric Carle has died
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
It the became a “thing” where it was the first book we got for every kid born in my extended family, and now that I have my own kids 40+ years later it was the first I got for them too. They both know it by rote, have the toys, had the bed sheets, everything. They’re now in the early years of school and still absolutely love the story and have the posters in their rooms despite them being “old” for it.
RIP Eric. You’ve left an amazing mark on the world.
The moralizing "nice green leaf" was neither his idea nor desired.
https://www.theparisreview.org/the-art-of-fiction-carle
But the tone of the article is clearly tongue-in-cheek, and also it has a publication date of April 1.
Modern life demands critical thinking skills.
Not really. Being mistaken is not the same thing as being defamatory. If someone is honestly just incorrect, and you go parroting what they said without independently verifying (especially if the person is a pseudo-anonymous internet commenter and not a subject-matter expert) then frankly that is entirely your fault.
Being intentionally deceived is another matter.
There was 4 hours between the original probably wrong post and yours.
Did you really manage to spread to everyone you know in that 4 hours that the nice green leaf is propaganda? Why? It sounds at most like something I might drop in passing conversation, not something I would attempt to broadcast when first told of it.
on edit: having read further down I see that the probably wrong is actually wrong, it was definitely a joke issue.
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/01/the-paris-rev...
Definitely a parody.
"I don’t recognize childhood obesity. No one should. I see children doing what they like, which is eating, and doing it without the shame or remorse later drilled into them by Judeo-Christian ethics. This is what I mean when I say juvenile morality: it’s a kind of a priori humanism. Children predate the law."
The whole interview is one long joke, and the part about the publisher changing the plot is a knowing parody of author-editor relations -- to anyone who's ever been within blast radius of one!
[1] https://www.theparisreview.org/the-art-of-fiction-carle
[2] https://eric-carle.com/about-eric-carle/articles-interviews/
- You Whoreson Cullionly Barber-Monger! 9 Bully-busting Insults from Shakespeare
- Your Struggle: Karl Ove Knausgaard Helps You Navigate the School Yard
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/01/the-paris-rev...
Also, the included word game is…hilarious. https://www.theparisreview.org/word-hunt
As pointed out in comments elsewhere in this discussion, this factoid seems to come from a satirical parody "interview".
https://twitter.com/ericcarle?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcam...
I was a little disappointed in twitter marking his "happy Hanukkah" drawing as "sensitive content"
I'm going out on a limb here, BUT perhaps Twitter was flagging the combination of the menorah WITH the caterpillar. Imagine, a Jewish symbol with a pig head - that might be offensive to Jewish people.
Perhaps Twitter speculates that the insect (a non kosher food) with the menorah is making it unclean - and thus offensive. Perhaps. Again, I'm not certain. I'm also not offended. Nor am I Jewish. And I don't eat caterpillars.
I assume it's an AI mistake, but I don't get what the AI thought it was seeing.
Unless it's per region perhaps. Are you in the USA?
Maybe he marked it that way himself to prevent other people reporting it and risk getting his whole account marked as potentially sensitive.
Ugh. I hope that's a mistake and not foretelling a future where anything that isn't completely universal is censored.
It's called "Pancakes, Pancakes!" In it, the protagonist wants to eat some pancakes – but he discovers that in order to do so, he needs to harvest and mill some wheat, milk a cow and churn some butter, and so forth.
I read this to my kids when they were little, and it struck me as actually a pretty good lesson about how much work goes on outside of our house, in order to make Saturday Pancakes possible. But it's not presented in a preachy way at all – more of an excited way, like "isn't it interesting how much background work goes into Saturday Pancakes?".
I credit that book with getting my kids interested in food/cooking and much more than that as well – the seed of thinking about what has to happen for an Amazon box to show up at your door with a particular gizmo.
So I'll pour out some pancake batter for Eric Carle on Saturday morning.
How is The Very Hungry Caterpillar called in your language? Did the translator have similar freedoms with the name?
When we had children I was absolutely amazed that my partner didn't know Pippi Longstockings. Well turned out that the French translation was tamed/censored significantly, because Pippi was too rebellious (I know the irony in France), and because of that was never successful. They only made a new, more accurate translation in the late 1990s. Hence my partner who is born significantly before didn't know it.
So if we translated it from german directly back to english, the title would be "The Insatiable Caterpillar". Which is close to original "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" but not quite the same. There is a difference between "insatiable" and "very hungry" - namely the "very hungry" can eventually be sated.
It's strange how the translation/conversion from one language to another and then back doesn't necessarily get you the original. It would be like converting $10 to euros and then back to dollars doesn't get you the original $10 ( ignoring fees ).
She takes lyrics translates them from English to something else to something else gc a few times and then back to English. It's quite amusing.
Looking a bit I can't find any of his books in Swedish and neither he nor the caterpillar seem to have a Swedish wiki page.
Anecdotally I'd say well over half the people I know here in Sweden with kids of the relevant age own a copy. I also definitely read it as a kid, had it read to me in kindergarten, and even remember it as an 'animated' TV show (basically panning shots over the illustrations as a narrator read the story).
How old are you? I was born in 1987 so I grew up in the nineties.
“On Saturday, he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon.
That night he had a stomach ache.”
Such a precious memory for me. Thank you Eric Carle. RIP.
Also thanks Eric Carle for getting my kids to eat apples, pears, plums, strawberries, oranges, chocolate cake, ice-cream, pickles, Swiss cheese, salami, lollipops, cherry pie, sausage, cupcake, and watermelons (and nice green leaves)!
What i never realized was that a LOT of these books, Eric Carles are in that camp, are using words chosen to teach kids basic language skills and sentence formation. The ones that dont really employ a lot of those learning mechanisms, seem to be the ones that we grow tired of quickly and hit the back of the stack.. Im sure Nostalgia is part of it too.
Dr. Suess is similar and very heavy on sounds/aliteration. But you would be surprised to know that many of his books actually use very few words. Like Green Eggs and Ham is like 50 pages of sentence after sentence but only uses like 50 words total or something like that (i could be wrong, its one of the most famous ones that like that).
Honestly when I read to my young kids, i would get tired of the same books over and over and would just kinda make up the story. Now that my kids are learning to actually read, I dont do that anymore.
But I have personally found these books with extreme limited vocabulary to be much better read-aloud books for 2-year-olds than books for independent reading by 4–5 year-olds. More generally, many other graded readers are excellent read-aloud books. At age 2–3, my kids particularly enjoyed the Henry and Mudge books https://www.amazon.com/dp/1534427139, and everything by Arnold Lobel.
If you are trying to teach kids to read, let me highly recommend Bloomfield’s workbook Let’s Read from the early 60s, which I heard about from a 2012 comment here on HN by Tokenadult. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0814311156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4665466
Bloomfield was one of the leading linguists of his era, and his book is very carefully structured to introduce only one new spelling–sound association per lesson, with the first half consisting of only regularly spelled words, so there is no possible confusion, with the full mishmash of irregular words only introduced after the reader is already fluent with regular spellings.
My son & I started working through it together for about 10–15 minutes per day when he was 3.5 years old, and it took about 8 months to get to the end, after which he could fluently read pretty much any material he could comprehend. As a not-quite-5 year-old he now happily independently reads books intended for 3rd–4th graders. (I’m not trying to suggest every kid should start on such a project at that age; every kid is different, and interests and attention span vary.)
There is some discussion of the differences in the two editions in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4665466 as well as the reviews on Amazon. I am going to give the updated version a try.
And that’s pretty amazing for your kid. That’s waaaaay above normal. We read every night to the kids, but we aren’t a huge reading family (if that makes sense)
This is part of a broader phenomenon, where most things are more complicated than you first think when you dig into it. This leads some people to assume work in areas they don't understand is easy.
'That should only take 30 minutes' - winds up taking 2 calendar weeks.
Heck I get people that think MY job is just clicking next on installers, there are entire swaths of things we do that others simply aren’t aware of because it’s transparent to them. I even had one lady question how much I made based on that very assumption. (She’s not a very nice person in general anyway)
The new CIO knew not our role and assumed we were a physical packaging team, dealing with bubble wrap and cardboard boxes - "why do we pay them so much?"
The CIO was educated pretty quickly. :-)
edit: I had time, I wrote a shorter comment.
The worst children's books are ones that don't roll off the tongue, that use too-complicated phraseology, that through circumlocution challenge the rea—well, you get it. They trip me up!
“Bear and Wolf walked through the quietly falling snow, using their eyes, and ears, and noses to take in the snowy woods.”
Bear is female, Wolf is male, and they are at home in the cold, as we can be if we allow ourselves to acclimate. They explore together, go they separate ways, and meet again in late spring.
Also, I find Owl at Home intriguingly solipsistic, but that's not really a concept that I think my kids would understand.
My favorite to read to my little guys is _This is Not My Hat_ by Jon Klassen, which is one of the funniest, most subtle ones we've come across.
His books are superb! Short, sweet and extremely funny :D
I distinctly remember one day Skyping with my mother telling her how hard it was to find good kids books and using "A Sick Day for Amos McGee" as an example of a good one. I recited a few lines to demonstrate the language, "Every day when his alarm clock clanged Amos swung his legs out of bed and swapped his pajamas for a fresh-pressed uniform"... my daughter, to my surprise (not yet old enough to talk at the time) rushed into the other room to fetch the book.
My kids never got tired of me reading it and I never got tired of reading it. They loved that book. The illustrations are extremely well done. Who would draw bats wearing floaties?
Brown Bear, Brown Bear from Carle himself is mediocre junk. It's just colors and animals, and has no character, no narrative, no arc.
The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar is an amazing, astounding masterpiece. It is usually printed with a sort of dynamic tactical approach with different page sizes, holes in the pages, the story has a real arc, it teaches biology, it carefully works in numbers and days of the week and the idea of time frame… it's a true stand-out.
Most of Carle's stuff is somewhere in the middle, though he has a few other superb ones.
Just like art for older audiences, there really is a range. You could say that all movies are the same: people having conflicts and doing stuff. On some level, they're all dramatic and simplistic.
It's not mere taste. What makes a great book or movie for any age is not total relativism.
It has attractive clear illustrations of one animal per page, a simple repeating structure with only a few new words each page, nice rhyme/meter. Its structure involves repeatedly anticipating the next animal, which makes it easy to memorize.
It is a book my kids enjoyed “reading” aloud to themselves at age 1.5–2 before they could fully remember the content of more complicated picture books.
* * *
Of course, this isn’t the only type of book small kids should be listening to, and in the genre of extremely simple picture books there is a lot of abject garbage.
But I'm not actually opposed to the basic structure of "animal color" that Brown Bear has, I think it could retain that and somehow also get more effective nuance. It's entirely superficial. Note also that 2yo's don't have an experience and relation to classes and teachers, so that doesn't even fit. The very same structure could be less arbitrary and be used instead to connect associations that are worthwhile making for the 2yo's, the way that Hungry Hungry Caterpillar doesn't just show randomness, it actually fits a real biological context.
Adapt Brown Bear to highlight an ecosystem that goes together and it would be superior and still achieve all the same interest in the 2yo's.
Another one in a similar vein, which my kid liked, was "Here Are My Hands"
The wolf travels to other animals' homes; the animals are afraid at first, but they let him in because he says he only wants to make soup.
He comes in, boils water in a big pot, puts his stone in. The animals want to help with the soup, and so they suggest other ingredients. The wolf says "well, sure, you can add that if you want".
They drink the soup together. Then the wolf gets up, takes his stone back from the pot, and leaves.
The process repeats for 8 or 10 different animals, and that's it.
It's a fantastic book. We must have read it hundreds of times.
It takes real talent to appeal to both young and old. The early Spongebob cartoons were like that, Bugs Bunny, and the early seasons of The Simpsons
--------
He saw a puddle and he tried to swerve--
Into the mud rolled the big fat truck,
and his big important wheels got STUCK
https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Snow-Eric-Carle/dp/0399235795/
It's a great Christmas/Winter book. Definitely get the bigger, hardcover version. The illustrations are great and at the end of the story your kid will get to push a button and make some peaceful musical notes play.
https://twitter.com/buckwilson/status/1397930890446229504
https://twitter.com/AviTheNaftali/status/1397928222809939968
The Very Hungry Caterpillar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75NQK-Sm1YY
I See a Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPpkaldk84Y
Papa, Please Get The Moon for Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGqAw7UM6qo
The Very Quiet Cricket https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGqAw7UM6qo
The Mixed Up Chameleon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrmZeXf7ScU
"In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf..."
Alan Kay said "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.". Makes me think that people who are really serious about writing books for children, should do their own illustrations.
I do get the sense however that picture books are usually better when the author and illustrator collaborate closely.
I've considered book-writing on occasion, but never seriously considered childrens' books, mainly because I have no illustration skills.
I've greatly enjoyed reading his books to my children, especially "The Grouchy the Ladybug" and "Papa Please Get the Moon for Me".
In a similar vein, and for any curious readers out there, I was recently reduced to near tears reading "The Clown of God" by Tommie De Palo
RIP Eric Carle
Here is a good article with more info:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2017/04/05/how-western-...
It's funny, as I read Eric's obituary I can hear my own voice reading those books to my daughters so long ago.
RIP Eric, and thank you for bringing us so many good times.
They're great books to make funny sounds with. They're also great for asking our kids questions about the stories.
If you're tired of that, I'd highly recommend Happy Dog the Happy Dog:
https://topatoco.com/collections/ryan-north/products/qw-happ...
It's based on this comic:
I don't think this is actually a book for little kids.
the very hungry caterpillar is somewhat unique in that she absolutely loves the illustrations, like no other book. she really sits still and gazes agog at them, especially that picture of the sun at the beginning.
What strikes me about a lot of children's book is that they often talk about metamorphosis - which is a strange and beautiful concept. But we rarely encounter it in real life, other than figuratively.
Although I try to limit the Caterpillar book now since my son will start demanding cake, ice cream, sausage, etc after we read it. Makes bedtime routine really hard
FYI: the broadway production of his books is very well done as well.