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Thirty years ago, I had written The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and at one point I thought it would be nice to have a quartet of books. I just
thought a "quartet" sounded like a nice little group for a child to own. So over the years I did write four books: The Very Hungry Caterpillar , The Very Busy Spider, The Very Lonely Firefly, and The
Very Quiet Cricket. But then I thought, "Gee, a 'quintet' of books would be even nicer!" So I settled on the idea of the click beetle, an insect I had been thinking about for some time.
like little bugs and insects, and I know that they have become my "signatures"--but it's not an artificially arrived-at
signature. I grew up fascinated by little worms, bugs, and insects. I suppose my father had a lot to do with it. On our walks around the garden, he would point out these little insects to me. Maybe it was
because in Germany we didn't have elephants, giraffes or other large animals, so I had to settle for liking little creatures--ants, worms, and bugs. But don't you think that most children seem to have an
interest in them, too? There are so many surprising things about insects, their life cycles, for instance. Some, like cicadas, take seven years to hatch and then only live for a week or so! Why would nature do
that? Recently, I was reading about butterflies, and to my surprise I discovered that one species is carnivorous! It eats other insects. And ants are amazing! There are so many different kinds of ants in the
same colony, each with its own specialization: builders, fighters, food hunters and harvesters. Some ants even build mushroom cellars! Fascinating!!
The click beetle might seem at first like a dull little guy, but it has this remarkable ability to flip through the air, which I find very
interesting! I learned that adult click beetles have this wonderful ability, but do you know that they only land on their feet fifty percent of the time? One out of two attempts is not successful! Don't
you think that's strange? What did nature have in mind when it designed a bug that has only a fifty percent chance of getting out of harm's way?
Perseverance seemed to be the natural theme. Because they only land on their feet half of the time, it takes perseverance to get really good at
it. Of course, that is an anthropomorphic point of view. My little insects are metaphors for children, who have the same problems of learning to walk, to talk, to run, or whatever. So the importance of
"stick-to-itiveness" became the theme for The Very Clumsy Click Beetle. •
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Photo by Wolfgang J. Dietrich
About the Author:
Please Visit the Official Eric Carle website
Eric Carle, born in Syracuse, New York, moved with his family to Stuttgart, Germany, at the age
of six. His schooling there included work under the renowned professor Ernst Schneidler at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. After the war, he returned to New York to begin
a career as a graphic designer for The New York Times and later worked for an international advertising agency as an art director.
He wrote his first book, 1,2,3 to the Zoo in 1968, and has since written and illustrated over 60
picture books, translated into many languages.
Eric has two grown children. He and his wife, Barbara, live in western Massachusetts.
Recent Books
The Very Clumsy Click Beetle, Philomel Books, 1999
Hello, Red Fox, Simon & Schuster, 1998
Flora and Tiger: nineteen very short stories from my life, Philomel Books, 1997
From Head to Toe, HarperCollins, 1997
The Art of Eric Carle, Philomel Books, 1996
To contact this author or illustrator, please use the information for his or her publisher provided on our list of CBC member publishers.
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