The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Like the caterpillar in the story, this well-loved picture book underwent a major metamorphosis, having begun life as a manuscript of uncertain promise titled "A Week with Willi Worm." Eric Carle was a successful commercial artist when he decided, in midlife, that he would rather make picture books than ads for pharmaceutical companies. Carle, like his friend and one-time mentor Leo Lionni, approached the picture book as a playground for graphic experimentation, as a chance to "squeeze as much as possible out of the paper." As he once told an interviewer, "That is how the designer in me came to do holes."

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