Eric Carle (1929-2021) was acclaimed and beloved as the creator of brilliantly illustrated and innovatively designed picture books for very young children, including Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me; Have You Seen My Cat?; and TheTiny Seed. His best-known work, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has been translated into seventy languages and sold over fifty-five million copies. Carle illustrated more than seventy books, many bestsellers, most of which he also wrote, and more than 170 million copies of his books have sold around the world. In 2003, Carle received the Children's Literature Legacy Award for lifetime achievement in children's literature. In 2002, Eric and his wife, Barbara, cofounded The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art (CarleMuseum.org) in Amherst, Massachusetts, a 40,000-square-foot space dedicated to the celebration of picture books and picture book illustrations from around the world, underscoring the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of picture books and their art form. Eric Carle passed away in May 2021 at the age of ninety-one. His work remains an important influence on artists and illustrators at work today. Find out more at Eric-Carle.com.
PreS-Gr 1 A simple story, briefly told, which revolves around the waxing and waning of the moon. Monica asks Papa to bring her the moon, that she might play with it. By dint of ``a very long ladder'' and a mountain, Papa reaches the moon, waits until it becomes smaller, and obligingly retrieves it. Of course the moon continues to shrink and soon disappears, but a few nights later Monica sees it once again in the sky, where it begins to grow anew. Many of the pages fold out to double their size, which will delight young listeners but may be awkward for the storyteller during a group experience. Carle's illustrations are up to his usual excellence, bright and uncluttered, with the benignant moon a dominant feature. The flaw here is a weak ending; children are not exactly left hanging, but neither is there a strong sense of conclusion. While this is not a pourquoi tale in the true sense of the word, the changing moon is a familiar subject, and the illustrations have enough merit to attract children. Kathleen Brachmann, Highland Park Public Library, Ill.
Carle, whose The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been extraordinarily successful, scores again with this stunning picture book, drawn in thick, brilliant brushstrokes of blues and greens and reds that dazzle the eye. Monica wants to play with the moon, but can't reach it, so she asks her father to get it for her. Ingeniously designed with several fold-out pages, the books opens out horizontally to show a very long ladder Papa fetches, opens vertically to show him climbing the ladder above a very high mountain, and unfolds into a huge spread of the full moon, where the ladder has led Papa. But the moon is too big for him to carry, so he waits while it grows smaller, until finally it is the right size to bring home to Monica. She jumps and dances and frolics with it, but it keeps shrinking, until one day it's gone. But not for long: a thin sliver soon appears in the sky, growing larger and becoming full once again. A splendid introduction to the monthly lunar cycle, this is also a wondrous work of art that will stand up to countless readings. (All ages)
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