Perhaps the lack of serious evolution also stems from
the fact that Carle has also authored the vast majority of the books he
illustrates, allowing his message and his art to work in tandem unlike they
might if he were an artist seeking to illustrate a character that only the
author has seen within his or her own mind..
Likewise, while many of his books exist with the
simple goal of being visually enchanting while teaching a tiny child their
numbers and shapes, just as many of them come complete with lessons of heart,
picked up as he learned to navigate life as a little boy growing up in war-torn
Germany. “Like his collages, his stories are many-layered; beneath the playful,
humorous narrative there lies a ‘moral,’ a lesson, or a nugget of wisdom for
the small reader or listener” (Beneduce).
Eric Carle is still creating his trademark
illustrations as he has from that first book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do
You See? At his official website, eric-carle.com, visitors can watch animated
.gif images where he explains, step by step, the gentle manner by which he
playfully runs bright, exciting colors over a clean piece of tissue paper,
dabbing contrasting colors, one on top of the other, with brushes and sponges
until he finds a pattern that pleases him. He draws out the shape he wants to
create, and then painstakingly cuts shapes from the painted and dried tissue
paper to create the beautiful collages children and families have been enamored
with for decades.
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