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The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Image from amazon.com

Much like its protagonist, The Very Hungry Caterpillar metamorphoses. As its story begins and as it ends, it is a nature book featuring the life cycle of the butterfly from egg to adult; in the middle, though, it becomes a counting book featuring a tactile hook. Starting with the larva-eaten endpages, the copious whitespace allows for easy focus on the little caterpillar as it sets out on its journey through a series of die-cut pages. Beginning with a single hole in a single apple on a very short page, each opening in this section becomes longer and longer, with more fruit and more holes. Therefore, a child learning to count has multiple signifiers of increasing amount and quantity: the simple visual of the brightly-colored cut-paper fruit; the hole in each piece, which he or she can feel as an individual item; and the size of the page, which scales in direct proportion to the the number represented. The days of the week are also taught as these feats of larval gustation begin on a Monday and continue through the subsequent week. When Saturday comes, the concept of kind is combined with quantity as the caterpillar eats only one of a variety of less-than-healthful foods, which leads directly to the suggestion that such eating will cause a stomachache. On Sunday, the protagonist is one week old and has become a very corpulent caterpillar indeed. The final metamorphosis completes the nature lesson, conveying the notion that strange changes can be wonderful.

  • The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle; illus. by the author
  • Primary Crowell
  • 24 pp.
  • Published 1971
  • ISBN 0-399-20853-4
  • $19.99
  • Counting Book
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