Summer Road Trip: The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art

Since its 1969 publication, Eric Carle’s beloved children's book, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” has sold 30 million copies. That’s one every 30 seconds. Through the decades, readers have found the 83-year-old artist/author’s animals, as well as his insects and people, irresistible.

Some time ago, Carle and wife Barbara began traveling extensively, especially in Japan where picture book art is deeply embedded in the culture.  (My most treasured book is “Hokusai: One Hundred Poets” by the extraordinary 19^th century painter and printmaker known for “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.") Japan is home to twenty museums celebrating picture book art and, thanks to Eric and Barbara Carle, Amherst, Massachusetts is home to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Simply put, the museum is a wonderful place to visit.  Home to five colleges, Massachusetts’s Pioneer Valley is a hotbed of children’s book authors and illustrators; when I first entered the museum, area resident Peter Laird of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” fame strode in behind me.

Right now and running through September and October, three galleries have four exhibits of wonder and delight. The jazz guitarist/museum buddy/ husband and I spent two days of a three day vacation there and are planning another trip when the Jules Feiffer show opens in late October. More about these splendid shows in a moment; first some background on the museum, its structure, setting, and diverse offerings.

The building's modernist design is sensitively sited in an ancient apple orchard. “The museum from its very foundation is embedded in children’s literature,” said Executive Director Alix Kennedy during a long chat. Carle worked closely with the primary architect, Earl Pope of Juster Pope Frazier. If the name Juster is ringing a bell, there’s a good reason—that’s Norton Juster of “The Phantom Toll Booth" renown and a close friend and collaborator of Carle’s. (Think of Juster as a children’s book author who moonlights as an architect or vice versa.)

“The museum echoes Carle’s aesthetic as an artist, with its white spaces, bright colors and openness to nature,” Kennedy said. We looked through the large lobby’s floor to ceiling windows at summertime hail falling against a backdrop of apple trees and lumbering hills.

Light floods the Eric Carle lobbies, the spacious art studio and the bring-your-own-lunch cafeteria. The child-friendly reading and story time room is cozier: “We have 4,500 books catalogued by artist,” Kennedy said. The museum’s beautiful, 157-seat auditorium and its three galleries are windowless because works on paper need protection from daylight.

“We can’t display Eric’s most famous illustrations all the time; they are too fragile,” Kennedy explained. “We had high quality, giclee prints made, and we hung them low in the auditorium lobby for ease of viewing by patrons under three feet tall."

You’re encouraged to take pictures with your child next to a giclee of his favorite Carle work, or, if you grew up with members of the Carle menagerie, take one of yourself there and send the photo with a thank you note to your folks. Better still, visit with both the kids and your parents; there were many multigenerational pilgrims the days we visited, as well as adult art lovers unaccompanied by a child.

There are also films, theater, music, classes, drop in workshops—tissue paper collage being the  current theme, story times, a 10,000 volume research library, professional development programs, meet the artist receptions and lectures and much more.

But for us, above all, there is the original art, and each of the four exhibits is revelatory. In the west gallery is “The Art of Eric Carle: Family and Friends” and a small show of A.A. Milne works from his Winnie the Pooh books. In the central gallery are preparatory and completed drawings for Barbara McClintock’s “The Heartaches of a French Cat” (told completely in pantomime) as well as her color studies and other preliminary works.

 “We want to inspire people of all ages to create, to see the process; we want to demystify art,” Kennedy said. “Kids come to our programs and soon are asking questions about the gutter of the book, where a double page spread is joined.”

Spend some time, see Carle’s processes and also some unexpected work, including a sample costume and a model of his stage set for a 2001 area production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” Carle’s texture and colors, ever bright in the books, are absolutely dazzling in the originals. The jazz musician/museum buddy/husband and I laughed out loud at the word play and visual puns in the trio of selections from Carle and Juster’s “Otter Nonsense.”

“Laughing out loud,” sheer delight and total aesthetic joy were the themes of day two when we immersed ourselves in the east gallery’s brilliant “Tomi Ungerer: Chronicler of the Absurd.”

If you don’t know the trilingual, French-born Ungerer’s work, blame it on librarians who removed his children’s works after the publication of some very dark books for grownups such as “The Party” and “Babylon.”

Both Ungerer and Carle had dark childhoods in Nazi Europe and if Carle’s work is a return to his happier times before the family debarked from upstate New York for Germany, Ungerer’s are all about sly, Gallic incision. In his drawings, Ungerer is an absolute master of economy of line. I had to buy “Adelaide,” about a winged kangaroo, then sit outside and read it when the museum closed—the images of Paris, Notre Dame and  wide eyed Adelaide awed by “Victoire de Samothrace—Winged Victory” are worth the price of admission-- which is by the way, is  reasonable.

I made broad hints about the collected Mellop stories and my birthday.

The Eric Carle book store is terrific, but you don’t have to buy a book to read it. The museum thoughtfully places broad, low benches throughout the galleries with wooden boxes containing copies of the books where the illustrations appear. We read the Ungerer’s essential “Moon Man,” while viewing some of the original paintings.

“Art is for everybody and the picture book is the art you first loved,” Kennedy said. I agree on both counts: For more thoughts, see 

The whole area is a perfect weekend getaway and within shouting distance of the Berkshires, Boston and Southern Vermont. Trust me on this one and make your plans now.

Read much more about The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art at http://www.carlemuseum.org/Home or call (413) 658-1100.

The museum is at 125 West Bay Road, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Ample parking, fully handicapped accessible. Open every day in July and August; closed Mondays and major holidays the rest of the year with special Monday openings when Massachusetts public schools are on vacation. Admission is $9 adults, $6 for students, those under 18 or over 65 and educators, with family packages available. Picnics are encouraged, either at tables in the orchard or the cafeteria; Atkins Farm Market is a minute down the road and has a very reasonably priced salad bar, deli counter and prepared foods.