Master of color turns another page

Smiling yellow suns, placid-eyed moons, a quiet cricket and, especially, a grass-green caterpillar with a tomato-red face, munching his way to rainbow-winged, butterfly glory. This is the picture book world of collage artist Eric Carle, whose books -- including “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” with its bright, poster-style illustrations and little die-cut holes so intriguing to small fingers -- have been a staple of early childhood for almost 36 years.

Parents who grew up with Carle’s gentle books are now reading them to their own preschoolers, and they line up just as eagerly as their children to have their nostalgic favorites signed by the Massachusetts-based author whenever he makes his bookstore appearances.

He’s greeting his fans again these days with the publication of “Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?,” his third collaboration with author Bill Martin Jr. The book, published by Henry Holt and Co., is a rhyming introduction to animals on the endangered list.

On a recent swing through Southern California, Carle, 74, took some time to chat about his work. In a shady outdoor nook at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, Carle, bearded and bespectacled, his round face creased with humor lines, spoke of his success, his passion for color and art, and the path that led to his calling, a path that included difficult childhood years in World War II Germany. (He was born in New York; his family moved back to Germany when he was 6.)

“In the war, it was very gray,” Carle said, an accent still apparent in his quiet speech. Bombings, camouflaged buildings, utilitarian clothing, “that was life to me.”

After the war, the teenager went to art school and discovered a love of color, sparked by his exposure to the Impressionists and to what Hitler had designated and banned as “Degenerate Art”: abstract art and Expressionism.

“It was a revelation. It was like lightning struck me,” he said.

A revered professor, whom Carle still refers to as “The Master,” shaped his approach to art-making. It begins with “aesthetic integrity,” he said, the responsibility of the artist to make a contribution that makes the world a better place.

“I still feel responsible to my teacher -- would he approve?” Carle said.

The publication of “Panda Bear” has significant resonance for Carle. It was his first collaboration with Martin in 1967, “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?,” that led him to exchange a successful advertising career in New York for the world of children’s books. (The pair’s second collaborative effort, in 1992, was “Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?”)

“From Bill I learned about rhythm, repetition and simplicity,” Carle said. From Ann Beneduce, his longtime editor, he learned “to always give something extra” in the way of unexpected visual or tactile elements.

Carle has applied those lessons to more than 70 of his strikingly colored, nature-centric children’s books, most of which he wrote as well as illustrated. Sales are at around 60 million copies and counting -- his “Caterpillar” classic accounts for more than 18 million.

Carle designs his own collage material, painting large sheets of tissue with acrylic in “all kinds of colors and textures” and filing them away by color, until he’s ready to cut, tear and shape them into his distinctive, layered illustrations.

“I’ve got three kinds of papers,” he laughed. “Some are very, very beautiful -- I hate to cut into them. Then I have these ugly colors and they sit there for years and I finally throw them away. The ones in the middle I use a lot.”

Noted children’s book critic and historian Leonard S. Marcus considers Carle to be “one of the masters of his generation,” continuing the “pathfinding work” of such picture book makers of the 1930s and ‘40s as Margaret Wise Brown (“Goodnight Moon”).

With his emblematic images, Marcus said, “Carle combines great skill as a graphic artist with a conceptual approach to storytelling that is perfectly suited to the interests and needs of small children.”

The artist’s major new work, however, is the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, a 40,000-square-foot, $22-million collection of airy, pristine white, art-making studios and tranquil galleries with 20-foot-tall glass windows -- and heated floors for the comfort of small visitors -- nestled in a lush, green apple orchard adjacent to Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.

With a permanent exhibition of Carle’s originals, it also celebrates other such giants of the genre as Maurice Sendak, Leo Lionni and Mitsumasa Anno, and has drawn nearly 70,000 visitors since it opened in November.

It’s not a children’s museum, just art in a tranquil setting, but “people are spending two and three hours here,” said art historian Nick Clark, the museum’s founding director. “And one of the most gratifying things we see is that it’s the child who doesn’t want to leave.”

Beyond providing children with an introduction to museum-going, Carle’s goal is to enhance the status of picture book art, traditionally ranked outside the world of fine art. The idea was sparked by a visit he and his wife, Barbara, made to picture book museums in Japan.

“A few years later, I thought, ‘I’m getting older, I’ve been very successful, it’s give-back time,’ ” Carle said. “I have all my originals. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a picture book museum?”

“The museum is an impressive building,” Marcus said, “and I think it can be an eye-opening experience for a lot of people. What people are seeing is an amazing variety of art [that] gives pleasure, it gives insight into the human condition, it’s connected to art movements of its time or previous times. From almost every criterion you can think of, this is the real thing.”

Carle and his wife are the museum’s major donors. “It’s the house that ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ built,” he said.

Exposing children to “beauty and art” is paramount, Carle believes. “It’s like air and breathing. And art is not necessarily just a picture on the wall in a museum. It’s something beautiful that you look at, poetry reading, good conversation, a good meal.

“That’s what the richness of life is. One’s feelings inside. Not having everything, doing everything, rushing every place.”

Carle is already at work on his next book. It was inspired by the fact that male seahorses give birth to their offspring. “It’s very PC,” he joked, “it’s about a stay-at-home father.”