ED1034 - Developing Learning in Early Childhood

Developing Learning in Early Childhood

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Eric Carle is a wonderful American artist, master of children writing, in this book, came up with a story to help kids learn to count and to explain to them what a “week” is? The image of caterpillar, which is selected from the egg, eats, grows and turns into a butterfly, is a brilliant discovery designed to illustrate the passage of time in a caterpillar's life. Pictures in the book are bright and very expressive for the reader every time s/he reads.

It is very interesting book for children written by Eric Carle through the use of pictures and visual designs so that it attracts children's attention and become easy to understand. The book was initially published in the year 1969, by World Publishing Company, after which the book was published later by Penguin Putnam. The book includes a story of caterpillar eating its way by a broad range of foodstuffs prior to becoming a pupa and becoming a butterfly. The book, due to its quality content and ability to attract children won several award of children's literature as well as few award for graphic design (Maclean, Bryant, & Bradley, 1987). One of the other milestones that the book achieved was the number of copies that has been sold, which is 30 million throughout the world. It's been said that every one minute after its publication, one copy of the book has been sold. It's been considered as the best classics of childhood till today. It's rated as second in the best children's picture books in the survey of the year 2012 undertaken by readers of School Library Journal (Carr, 2001).

The Very Hungry Caterpillar utilizes distinct illustrations of collage (third book of Carle, and a latest approach at the instance), “eaten” holes in book and easy to understand text with themes of education for children- counting, the week days, life stages of butterfly, and foods. There've been a great number of relevant books and other literature, which includes tools of education, produced in relation to the book. The diet of caterpillar is imaginary in spite of being accurate scientifically, but The Very Hungry Caterpillar commences ideas of life stages of Lepidoptera where conversions occur with the final transformation from “hungry caterpillar” to “beautiful butterfly”, and it's been supported by the Society for Royal Entomology.

Eric Carle, in his book, through enduring and simple text has developed an everlasting appeal for children. The book has been written 40 years before but still expresses a vibrant and fresh essence as it outlines the life of hungry caterpillar since its existence as an egg to a colorful butterfly. Eric Carle explains the egg as a little egg lying on a leaf in the moon light (Jones, 1977). Eric's style of explaining his thoughts and the idea of the text is very attractive and adds value to the interest of the book for children. Eating dissimilar foodstuffs on dissimilar days of week for example ...