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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | J 921 CARLE | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
My father loved animals, it is from him that I inherited that love for all kinds of creatures. My father liked to draw, it is from him that I inherited the joy of picture making. My father was a story teller, it is from him that I learned to tell a story.
Eric Carle known for his outstanding picture books, among them The Very Hungry Caterpillar , has now turned his talent to writing these short stories. Flora and Tiger is an exuberant and touching collection of personal vignettes dedicated to his gentle father, from his earliest years in America, through his boyhood in the shadow of war in Germany, to the present as an adult living and working in the United States.
Eric Carle writes of his Oma (German grandmother) and the hen who might have been a rooster, his cousin Fritz and the turtle who loved a cat, his friend Sol and his kidnapped black cat, and his Uncle Adam and his tamed ravens, and many others.
"These stories have three things in common," Eric Carle writes, "animals and insects, my family and friends. and me." Writing with wit and charm, full of love for the people around him, in these stories, Eric Carle welcomes readers, young and old, into his world.
Author Notes
Eric Carle is an award-winning, children's picture book author and illustrator whose most recognized work is The Very Hungry Caterpillar Board Book. Carle was born to German parents in 1929 in Syracuse, New York. The family returned to Germany in 1935, moving to a suburb of Stuttgart. Carle disliked high school, quitting at the age of 16 before graduation. He was admitted as the youngest student to the Akademie der bildenden Kunste, an art school.
After finishing at the Akademie, he worked as a poster designer for the U.S. Information Center in Germany until 1952, when he moved back to New York City. He was a graphic designer at the New York Times and later worked as an art director at L.W. Frohlich & Co. In 1963, Bill Martin, Jr. saw a poster of a red lobster that Carle had designed and asked him to illustrate Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, thus launching his freelance career. Among his many children's books are Dream Snow, Hello, Red Fox, The Very Clumsy Click Beetle, and Pancakes, Pancakes! His title The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse made Publisher's Weekly Best Seller List for 2011. His title Brown Bear Brown Bear What to You See? made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012. In 2015 he made The New Zealand Best Seller List with Love from the Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Eric Carle, beloved children's book author and illustrator, died on May 23, 2021. He was 91.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4 UpCarle shares a bit of himself in this collection of vignettes. In his words, "The stories...from various places and times...have three things in common: animals or insects, friends or relatives, and me." Nineteen short stories, each no more than three pages and sparsely illustrated by the author, allow readers glimpses into the artist's life. They meet his grandparents who argued about a hen that might have been a rooster. Carle reminisces about exploring the countryside with his father or making the horrible and painful discovery that a wasp is trapped in his trousers. These stories are gentle wanderings through his life rather than a biography in linear form. Some take place in Germany and some in the United States; they range in time from childhood during World War II to the present. The sketches are sometimes moving, sometimes funny, and sometimes uplifting. Flora and Tiger is an intimate portrait that provides a picture of this popular illustrator. A super addition to any study of Carle or his work.Jane Claes, T. J. Lee Elementary School, Irving, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
These 'very short stories' are closer to anecdotes, autobiographical fragments of Carle's encounters with creatures great (bears drunk on fermented apples) and small (a wasp invading Carle's trousers). Some are funny, some nostalgic; all are rendered as low-key reminiscences that often trail away in the end. Spot art, collage paintings of Carle's inimitable animals grace the well-designed pages, but the audience for the book seems more likely to be adult fans than children. From HORN BOOK 1997, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Gr. 4 and up. In his first book for older readers, a great picture-book artist writes spare autobiographical vignettes that take place from his childhood to the present--in Germany, where he grew up, and in the U.S., where he has lived and worked since 1952. The quiet, factual sketches are in no chronological order; what connects them is their fusion of the adult voice and the child's viewpoint, the physical intimacy remembered. In the most beautiful piece, he describes his long country walks in his childhood with his father, who taught the boy what to look for, and he remembers how it felt to hold onto his father's hand ("I still remember the touch and shape of his hand, the hair on its back, the bluish veins, his neat fingernails with the white half-moons at their base"). The book design is spacious with thick paper and lots of white space, and Carle's brilliantly colored tissue-paper collages have never been more expressive than in the occasional small animal illustrations, both elemental and intricate, with each vignette. Older kids (and adults) who loved books such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1969) will enjoy reading about the artist, and teachers could use the stories to encourage students to write about their own bits of memory, to capture the detail of how they felt and why they still remember it. (Reviewed December 15, 1997)0399232036Hazel Rochman
