Eric Carle would hand you a piece of tissue paper and a paintbrush. Not a sketch. Not a concept. A piece of thin, translucent paper and a jar of acrylic paint, and he’d say: “Paint it one color. Any color. We’ll figure out what it becomes later.”
That’s how he worked. He didn’t draw illustrations and then color them. He made colors first — painting sheets of tissue paper in bright, textured acrylics, then cutting the dried paper into shapes and collaging them onto the page. The caterpillar in The Very Hungry Caterpillar is made of torn paper. The red is a sheet painted red. The green is a sheet painted green. The face is cut freehand, without a pencil line. The imprecision is intentional. A child’s hand could have cut those shapes. That’s the invitation.
He published The Very Hungry Caterpillar in 1969. It has sold over 55 million copies in 66 languages. It is, by most measures, the best-selling children’s picture book in history. And the breakthrough wasn’t the caterpillar or the story or even the illustrations. It was the holes.
How He’d Want You Involved
The holes were the collaboration. Carle’s editor, Ann Beneduce, told him to make a book where the pages had physical die-cut holes. The original concept was a bookworm — a worm eating through pages. Beneduce suggested a caterpillar. Carle agreed because caterpillars become butterflies, which meant the story could have a transformation, which meant the physical book could change as the reader turned the pages.
The child sticks a finger through the hole. The child turns the page and the hole leads somewhere new. The book isn’t read — it’s touched. Carle understood that children learn with their hands before they learn with their eyes, and he designed his books as tactile objects, not just visual ones.
He’d apply the same principle to working with you. Whatever you were making — a story, a design, a meal — he’d ask how the audience could touch it. Not metaphorically. Physically. He believed that engagement starts in the fingertips and moves to the brain, not the other way around. His books prove this: the die-cut holes, the textured pages, the flaps, the pop-ups. Each one is an invitation to participate rather than observe.
The Fight
At some point you’d disagree about simplicity. You’d want to add detail. He’d want to remove it. The tissue paper collage technique produces images that look naive — big shapes, bold colors, no shading, no perspective. You might think this needs refinement. Carle would argue that refinement would destroy the thing that makes it work.
He was trained at the Akademie der bildenden Kunste in Stuttgart. He could draw realistically. He could paint with sophistication. He chose not to because sophistication creates distance. A photorealistic caterpillar is impressive. A collaged caterpillar made of torn paper is approachable. The child looks at the torn-paper caterpillar and thinks: I could make that. The child is right. And the thought — “I could make that” — is the moment where a reader becomes a creator.
He was born in Syracuse, New York, and moved to Germany with his parents at age six. He attended school under the Nazi regime. His father was drafted into the German army and captured by the Russians. Carle described his childhood in Germany as gray — the schools, the art classes, the prohibition against color and expression. He returned to America at 23 and spent the rest of his career making things that were the opposite of gray.
The Result
Over 75 books. Each one a collaboration between the artist and the child. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? — written by Bill Martin Jr., illustrated by Carle — taught generations of children that books can have rhythm. The Grouchy Ladybug taught them that books can have size. Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me taught them that pages can unfold.
He’d push you to make something simple enough that a four-year-old could participate in it. That constraint is harder than complexity. Anyone can add detail. Removing detail until only the essential remains — the color, the shape, the hole in the page — requires the confidence to trust that less is enough.
He tore paper, glued it down, and punched holes in the pages. The simplicity was the genius. A child can’t participate in sophistication. A child can stick a finger through a hole. Talk to Eric Carle and find out what else is on the table.