I have to confess that before having kids I didn't know who Eric Carle was. I vaguely remembered from my childhood the images of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but I think that I had never read the book. Given that here in the U.S., it seems that every household has to have a copy, I bought one for F when he was still a baby. The pictures are beautiful, but the story didn't really convince me and F just ignored it. We had also received, when he was born, the famous Polar bear, Polar bear, what do you hear?, which was definitely more appropriate for his age.
Recently, the kids rediscovered The Very Hungry Caterpillar and I've actually started to understand why, besides the pictures, the book was so appealing to young readers. It plays with repetition and very simple concepts. Two things that children like. Nowadays both F and P are big fans of the book. Not only they loved the book but they wanted some more from Eric Carle for their collection. I recently took them, on different occasions, to bookstores and to my surprise they both chose books from the author. So we now also have The Very Busy Spider and The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse. The latter has astonishing illustrations.
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