When he was starting out as a commercial artist, before any books with his name on them had been published, Eric Carle made a promotional flier to send around: a picture of a solid-blue whale that folds out over several connected pages. On the first page of the foldout you can see the whale whispering, via a tiny speech bubble, “think big.” Several folded-out pages later, in the white space next to the whale’s tail, there is a tiny red ladybug yelling, via a much bigger speech bubble, “THINK SMALL.”
It is an arresting piece — strong, funny and accessible in its conception and construction — the kind of thing that makes you slap your desk and wish you’d made it yourself.
I first saw it when I was an animation student in college, and even though I knew Carle’s work already, it profoundly affected my own. There was something about it that rode the line between the simplicity and warmth commonly understood to appeal to a young audience and the complexity and sophistication required to satisfy a hugely talented designer. It was saying quietly and loudly, and very clearly, “You can absolutely do both.”
That promo piece is reproduced on the inside dust jacket of “Eric Loves Animals (Just Like You!),” and it is the first in a series of elegant moves the design team pulls off in this delightful tribute to the late author-illustrator.
Calling it a tribute might actually be selling it a little short. The most complete collection to date of animals Carle depicted throughout his career, it succeeds on its own, regardless of one’s knowledge of or past affection for his work.
The only bits of text in the book are the names of the (alphabetically presented) animals and carefully chosen quotes from the man himself. Children can understand and appreciate these quotes at face value while adults will discern their wisdom. The type is set in Carle’s hand-cut letter font. It seems the idea was to include only elements that Carle himself crafted.
The range of illustrations — many previously unpublished — is wide. There are the colorful textured animals for which Carle is best known, of course, but a lot of space is also given to his earlier black-and-white woodcuts, his sketches and even a few photographs of his sculptures. Seeing all these animals together in one place calls to mind two of his work’s unique characteristics.
The first is how much Carle enjoyed our common recognition of a thing shown in its simplest form. He was never overly interested in anatomical accuracy or detail. Rather he seemed excited that anyone in the world, of any age, who looked at an arrangement he had made of brightly textured paper would say, “That is an elephant.” So much of his work, and his talk about his work, even the extended title of this book, “(Just Like You!),” is about that — our capacity to know and recognize things collectively. He was casting as wide a net as possible in order to connect.
His artistic identity has become defined by his use of the full spectrum — he wanted everyone’s favorite color in there. But there was also a selective creative mind at work. After all, design is largely about leaving things out. When you’ve chosen every color, you’ve also not chosen any color in particular. There is an austerity behind the bright rainbow.
Another characteristic of Carle’s animals — this one somewhat revolutionary — is that he almost never grants them movement or facial expressions. His animals stand still, looking either straight at the viewer with a blank expression or somewhere off into the distance. The Very Hungry Caterpillar’s eyes — light green orbs outlined in yellow, with no black pupils to focus their sight — give almost nothing away.
There is research suggesting that in order to grab kids’ attention visible emotion should be maximized: faces contorted and stretched to drive home what’s going on inside. Carle didn’t buy into that. Animals, in his world, though colorful and bold on the page, remain mysterious and belong only to themselves. Carle loved them not for the roles they could act out or the more human emotions they could portray but for being themselves. His way of showing that love was to distill them down to their simplest components and imbue them with lives of their own that are none of our business.
A book about the work of someone as iconic and revered as Eric Carle could have been a sentimental overload, full of clippings and pictures and writings (like this) from people finally given a chance to say how much he meant to them. But the appropriate book, the one in keeping with his spirit of elegant reduction — giving very little away while still being beautiful and engaging and fun — is here, and it seems like the right way for us to say that we loved him.
The post Jon Klassen Reviews the Most Complete Collection to Date of Eric Carle’s Animal Art appeared first on New York Times.
