The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

That alone is a pep talk, enhanced by the wisdom that making mistakes allows everyone to learn and demonstrate they did their best. But what if your cheerful chick errs and doesn’t do what it set out to do? Don’t worry-your cheery chicken just needs a reminder that everyone makes mistakes. Your feathered champion will be right there, encouraging you all the way, with a loud “WOO HOO!” that’ll keep you going and remove any doubt you’re super terrific. What’s better than a cheerleading chicken?Īre you ever blue, unsure, tired, or overworked? Do you ever feel lost or overwhelmed? This uplifting book, expressed in delightful, jaunty verse, explains how to lift your spirits pronto: What you need is a booster chicken telling you’re doing great even when you’re not so confident, as when you’re learning or practicing a new skill, for instance. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed-probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / IU.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle