You know you’re an icon when you’re the featured Google site id for the day. March 20 is not only the first day of spring (yeah!), but it also marks the 40th anniversary of the now-classic Eric Carle book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This book is so familiar to the children’s literature landscape that it even has its own wiki (see link below). So how does a book become a classic? How does a book go from popularity with one generation of readers to a book that has staying power across generations? That’s a good question.
Here are my criteria for what gives a book staying power—making a connection, for whatever reason, to a book. Recently I was giving a talk to a group of students just beginning their teacher training. I usually begin these kinds of talks with the question, “What book or books do you remember from your childhood?” This is my way of setting the stage to talk about how important it is for adults to read with children because we have the power to build what we call Print Motivation just by sharing books and our excitement of books with young children. When we model for children how wonderful we think books are we are on the road to creating readers. One young man in the class raised his hand and said, “I don’t remember the name of the book, but I remember that book with the caterpillar that eats and eats all week until he turns into a butterfly—yeah, that’s the book I most remember from when I was a kid. My teacher read it to me”. This young man didn’t realize the chord he struck in me! He remembered not only a specific book from his childhood, but the adult who shared that book with him—BINGO! Somehow that book was branded into his memory so that although he couldn’t readily recall its title, he could retell the story and the experience of reading that book. And you know what? When it comes time for him to start reading to young children he’s likely to pick up The Very Hungry Caterpillar. And thus a classic is born and the cycle of building Print Motivation continues.
In honor of the 40th Anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar a beautiful pop-up version of the book has been published. Happy spring and thanks, dear caterpillar friend!
Check out The Very Hungry Caterpillar and all of Eric Carle’s books at the Milwaukee Public Library at www.mpl.org. Visit Eric Carle’s website at www.eric-carle.com Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Very_Hungry_Caterpillar
