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Eat your heart out

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, one of the greatest childhood classics of all time, celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. Kate Taylor, whose programme on the book can be heard on Radio 4 tomorrow, examines the reasons for our ongoing love affair with children's fiction's greediest hero

Friday October 22, 2004

I have just finished making a radio programme about a book. Thirty-five years old and just 224 words long, it has nevertheless sold a copy somewhere in the world every single minute since it was first published. It has been translated into more than 30 different languages, from Swahili to Catalan, worldwide sales top the 20m mark, and in one edition, if not several, is a constant presence on the UK's bestseller lists. "It is one of our most successful books of all time" says Francesca Dow, managing director of Puffin Books. "It's a publisher's dream and we are very lucky to have it."

The book is called The Very Hungry Caterpillar. For those that don't know it (and there can't be many of you) it tells the very simple story of a caterpillar who is born, feels hungry, eats a selection of rather inappropriate food, feels a bit sick, builds a cocoon and emerges as a butterfly. Not exactly War and Peace, but as children's writer Ted Dewan points out: "The books you read when you're a kid become part of your spinal cord. I've forgotten what I was reading last week but I can still recite half of Dr Suess".

Those of us who continue to read fiction as adults will recognise the point Dewan is making. As grown-ups, our reading is subject to a far wider range of pressures than we experienced as children. Our busy lives mean that we have to cram our book time into five-minute chunks on the tube in the morning, or in bed at night, half asleep. The adult reading experience is further complicated by our awareness that we didn't enjoy that classic as much as we ought to have done, that we're spending too much time reading rubbish, that we still haven't got round to reading that "unmissable" book that absolutely everyone else apparently finished months ago. Childhood reading, on the other hand, is simpler and more direct. And as Ted Dewan says, its effect on us is strangely powerful and tenacious.

The story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar began back in 1969 when young graphic designer Eric Carle was feeling bored. "I wasn't thinking of books or anything like that," he says. "I didn't have anything to do, so I took a stack of paper and a hole-punch and I playfully punched holes ... then I looked at them. Straight away I thought of a book worm"

Eric's editor, Ann Beneduce, was not convinced that "Willi the Bookworm" was a winner. The story goes that the pair sat around trying to think of something more engaging until, at the same instant, Ann said "Caterpillar!" and Eric said "Butterfly!". The rest is history.

In the course of making the programme, it became clear to me that the appeal of The Very Hungry Caterpillar worked on many different levels from the practical to the almost spiritual, but those holes in the pages (an unprecedented gimmick that turned the book into a toy) remain a crucial part of its fascination - as, too, does the fact that it centres around food. "I come from Hull," says journalist Tom Armitage, "and I'm not saying my childhood was all coal and worms, but I had no idea that this range of food existed. I had never seen a watermelon before, and I wasn't at all sure what salami was. I used to look at that page for hours."

It's educational, too, providing teachers with the perfect tool for teaching. Dull, Janet-and-John-style reading schemes reigned supreme in the 1960s until the caterpillar showed up. "When educators got hold of it and realised what it could do, it was very instructive," says Bethan Marshall, education lecturer at King's College, London. "Children learn to read in three main ways: prediction, pattern and picture cues. The Hungry Caterpillar does all of them."

Then there are the pictures. Through his use of a simple collage technique, Carle inadvertently increased the educational value of the book because it is so easy to copy. "No one ever tells you when you become a teacher that you have to be good at art," says Coral Hitchings, a teacher at the Mulberry Bush school for children with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties. "It's a bit of a problem. But I know that if I can do something in the style of Eric Carle, my children will be able to too".

"The style was quite revolutionary," says Jane Ray. "It was part of a whole new movement in children's illustration and it really set the tone for what was to come". Nick Clarke, director of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, goes even further. "It's fair to talk about what Eric does in terms of artists such as Picasso and Matisse - he is as serious about what he is trying to achieve as they were. Certainly Picasso said 'I aspire to draw like a child'".

Eric Carle was born in New York, but homesickness prompted his family to return to their native Stuttgart in 1935. Eric remembers a "dull, grey world. Everything was camouflaged, there was no fashion, no colour anywhere". The art he saw did not inspire him. "It was all social realism. Soldiers winning the war, farmers digging the soil, that sort of thing". It was not until high school that Eric's art teacher, recognising the boy's talent, secretly showed him a box full of banned art, the work of "degenerate artists" Picasso, Klee and Matisse. "It was almost the first time I had seen such brilliant colours," he says. "At first I was shocked. It made an incredible impression on me".

Nick Clarke, who nowadays calls Carle "the Bruce Springsteen of the third grade" because of the crowds that attend his public appearances, suggests that the gorgeousness of The Very Hungry Caterpillar springs from Carle's reaction against the grimness of his wartime childhood. Carle himself agrees: "It may be psychobabble but I sometimes think I rehash that period of my life in my books".

He's not the only one who finds the book therapeutic. "I get lots of letters from teachers and therapists," explains Carle. "I recently got one letter from a teacher working with an autistic child who doesn't speak at all, except to say 'Eric Carle'". This might sound incredible, but Coral Hitchings is not surprised. The repetitive structure of the book provides, she says, "a calming, secure environment for children who have often had very chaotic lives. It's a book they return to again and again".

Much of the book's emotional impact hangs on the central transformation. After seven days' feeding, the caterpillar retreats into his cocoon and emerges in a splash of brilliant colour on the final page as ... a beautiful butterfly. The structure has clear religious overtones, and the book features in sermons and Sunday schools alike - but its message goes deeper than that. "It is saying that if this caterpillar can become a butterfly there is hope for all of us, no matter what we look like" says Elizabeth Hammill, director of the Centre for the Children's Book in Newcastle. "It is a book of hope," agrees Eric Carle. "I was scared of growing up. Would I master all the things that grown-ups do? This book says, you'll grow up and you'll be alright - and not just alright, you'll be beautiful"

It is a message with universal appeal - and application. Muoy You, director of the Seametrey School in Cambodia, explains: "I try to teach our children that you can always become better, but greed is not the solution. When the caterpillar is greedy he gets sick. When he is reasonable, and works hard, he feels better. In Cambodia we need this kind of message." Eric Carle, on the other hand, remembers the words of a young East German librarian. "She said, 'This book would never have been published here. The caterpillar represents a capitalist. He bites into every fruit, just takes one bite and he moves on, getting fatter and fatter. He's exploiting everything.'".

Perhaps she would not have been surprised to learn that one of the book's biggest fans is President Bush. When Bush visits primary schools on his campaign trail, nothing but the Caterpillar will do. "If teachers have put out other books his advance team will clear them" says Nick Clarke. "It's The Very Hungry Caterpillar that he reads." In 1999, when Pizza Hut ran a survey asking 50 US governors to name their favourite books from childhood, Bush opted for the Caterpillar. It didn't take long for gleeful commentators to point out that when the book was published, Bush was nearly 23. One could charitably assume that he had misunderstood the question and was naming his favourite children's book, but for journalists the "open parable" of the Caterpillar was an open target. Go to toostupidtobepresident.com and you will find a parody of the book in which a very hungry "plutocraterpillar" munches its way through endless piles of money. In the New Yorker, Anthony Lane suggested that for the president, the book is "a matchless parable for the entrepreneurial right. The caterpillar, far from being punished for his indulgence, suffers no more than a mild stomach ache before being transformed into a butterfly." Conservative capitalists "are thus assured of nothing more than mildly discomforting taxation before they attain the bliss of their first billion."

For most of the people I spoke to in the course of making the programme, this is pushing it a bit. But there remains an incredible well of affection for the book that epitomises that clinging memory of childhood reading. When Abigail Campbell, literature officer for the Arts Council, was writing a recent presentation, she looked for an image which symbolised children's literature. "When the hungry caterpillar came up on the screen the reaction was incredible," she said. "There were just sighs of joy around the room". "All life is here, in this deceptively simple format," agrees illustrator Jane Ray. "It's a masterpiece."

Eric Carle, now in his 70s, is pleased but still somewhat bemused by all this. "It was bread and butter to me" he says, "It paid my rent. I truly didn't think of lasting success or anything like that. I mean, it's just a book." But in this opinion he is very much in the minority. "The Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of the pillars of children's culture," says Ted Dewan. "It's almost like talking about how great the Beatles were. It's beyond reproach."

· Kate Taylor is a freelance radio producer. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, presented by John Hegley, is a Whistledown production and will be aired on Radio 4 tomorrow at 3.30pm

[original article]

Posted by thinkum at October 26, 2004 03:31 PM