The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a children’s photo book designed, illustrated and written by Eric Carle, first published by World Publishing Company in 1969, later published by Penguin Putnam. It has a caterpillar that feeds through a wide variety of foods before it blinks and emerges like a butterfly. The winner of large numbers children’s literature awards and a large graphic design award, which sold nearly 50 million copies worldwide. It has been described that you have sold the equivalent of one copy per minute since its publication. It has been described as “one of the greatest classics of childhood of every time. “The number of pictures of two children was voted in 1 2012 survey readers of the school newspaper Library.
The very Hungry Caterpillar uses distinctive collage illustrations (Carle’s third book, and a new style at the time), “Eaten” holes in pages and plain text with educational themes-counting, the days of the week, the phases of food and the life of a Butterfly. There have been a large number of related books and other products, including educational tools, created in relation to the book. Caterpillar’s diet is fictitious rather than scientifically accurate, nevertheless the book introduces concepts from the life stages of Lepidoptera where transformations occur, including the final metamorphosis of ‘ Hungry Caterpillar ‘ to ‘ butterfly Linda ‘, and has been Endorsed by Sociedad Real entomological.
In a sense, the book was inspired by a blow: “One day I was hitting holes with a hole punch in a pile of paper, and I thought of a Bookworm and so I created a story called a week with Willi the worm. “Carle was familiar with ” pages differently “than Boo reading as a child in Germany.
One week with Willi the worm counted on a Bookworm called Willi. But Carle Ann Beneduce’s editor advised that a green worm would not make a sympathetic protagonist. “Then my editor suggested a caterpillar rather and said ‘ Butterfly! “That’s how it started,” recalls Carle.
The pages differently with holes representing the caterpillar trail through the food were a challenge. No American printer could do the job economically, nevertheless Beneduce found one in Japan.