Tales from the Seabury Library

It's raining; it's pouring.

And I've got a suggestion for a family activity that will brighten your day: A visit to the most famous caterpillar in the world. (I checked; twice as many Google hits as Lewis Carroll's.)

The Tacoma Art Museum is hosting a wonderful exhibit - The Art of Eric Carle - through Jan. 21.

I went to the exhibit Tuesday, and also got to hear the creator of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" in person on Oct. 22 during the museum's "Conversation with Eric Carle." Ladybugs teacher Susan Ennaro was there, too, with her daughter, a teacher at Tacoma's Bryant Elementary School.

The exhibit is a delight and so was the 77-year-old author.

The museum has hung the work low in deference to its young visitors. Museum director Stephanie Stebich said the museum has booked about 170 school visits during the exhibit, almost twice as many as during an entire normal year.

Carle began his art career in advertising. He said during his talk that he views each of his illustrations as "a small poster." Standing in front of his work, that comes across vividly. Each picture is complete in itself. His colors are rich and the compositions are wonderful. You can also understand his tissue paper collage process even more clearly than in the books.

My favorite was a pelican illustration from "Animals, Animals," a book of poetry.

Carle's first book on his own was "1,2,3 to the Zoo." When he first submitted it to his editor, she pointed out to him that it was nice, but just a counting book, he needed to add something special. He put a small train at the bottom of each page; as pages turn, each car on the train has one more zoo animal than the one before it.

From then on, all of Carle's books have something special: the holes in "Hungry Caterpillar," the raised web in "The Very Busy Spider," the squeak of a rubber duck in his latest: "10 Little Rubber Ducks."

The rubber duck story is based on true events. At 2 p.m. on Dec. 2, the art museum hosts this event: A special presentation by Seattle oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer. In 1992, a shipment of 29,000 rubber bathtub toys, including ducks, frogs, and turtles, fell overboard from a container ship into the waters off the coast of Alaska, inspiring Eric Carle to write 10 Little Rubber Ducks. Ebbesmeyer studies ocean currents by tracking the migration of random junk and has maintained a website and recently published a paper documenting the migration of the toy ducks for over 14 years.

Incidentally, that ship was bound for Tacoma.

A few last things from Carle's talk:

He said he's been criticized (especially in his native Germany) for portraying only secure childhoods in his work. But that's intentional, he says. "I want to make children feel safe."

His favorite color is yellow, he answered, in response to a question from a child. He didn't have a favorite, but he's become most fond of yellow because it is the most difficult to work with. You can add another color to red or blue and they remain red and blue, but if you add another color to yellow, it's not yellow anymore.

All those who got to ask questions were children.

What does he like to do? Besides work on his books, he likes to garden and read. And he's too fond of honey and chocolate, he said.

Favorite of his books? "Do You Want to Be My Friend?" Because friendship is so important to children.

The question that made him pause (and got the biggest laugh from the audience)?: A very tiny child asked, "What is the very quiet cricket's name?"

He finally answered: "Why it's Quiet Cricket, I suppose."

If you go, you can also spend time in the library upstairs reading Carle's books, or in the art room next to it doing projects. There's also a cool exhibit of work by Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson. Children will enjoy this exhibit, too. Her work is full of color, sparkles and buttons. She's also illustrated some children's books. We have "Elijah's Angel" in Seabury's Library.

Let me know if you go! Talk to you soon.

(I've added a link to Eric Carle's Web site at right. There's lots of good stuff there, including videos.)