Putting the Torn Back Together

This week, we lost two greats of children literature world. Eric Carle, the author and illustrator, of the Very Hungry Caterpillar, and Lois Ehlert, illustrator of Chicka, Chicka Boom Boom. (What parent can say that without thinking “will there be enough room?”)

There is a very touching story about Eric Carle that I read this week, told by Eric Kimmel, author of one of my favorites, Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. I want to share it: “We lost Eric Carle yesterday. Another one of the greats is gone. He shared a story about himself with me once. His parents were immigrants from Germany. Eric started school in the US. He remembered a bright, sunny classroom, friendly teachers, paper, paint, crayons and lots of opportunity to draw and make pictures. Then his parents moved back to Germany and he had to go to Nazi school. Militarized, regimented, severe. His father was drafted, captured on the Russian front, and returned years after the war ended, a broken man. There's a lot of sadness behind his joyous stories and art. That's what makes them so wonderful.”

When we think about moments in history like Nazi Germany, we usually think about the big, obvious consequences – the demolished families, the children like Elie Wiesel growing up in the camps. But, for every “big obvious consequence,” there are also the people like Eric Carle – the innocent bystanders whose lives are forever altered and molded in small ways by what they witness and live through.

As soon as Eric Carle had the opportunity, he left to Germany and returned to the United States, where he still had citizenship. He had $40 in his pocket and managed to find a job as a graphic artist at the New York Times. Noted children’s author Bill Martin Jr. was impressed by Eric Carle’s work and asked him to collaborate on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? The rest is history.

Eric Carle created art for young children. Would his art have been different if he hadn’t grown up in Nazi Germany? I’m not sure, but he did do collage. His method: He would paint paper with bright colors, rip and cut that paper and then put it back together as something new and fanciful - brown bears, children and caterpillars. Not unlike a happy child, taken from a joyful place and brought to war-torn Europe. His artistic style relies on making something beautiful out of something destroyed. Perhaps that is a lesson from his life experiences – finding beauty in the torn remnants of what remains.