Adaptability - Ready and willing to adjust as necessary to the changes in people and circumstances that arise in daily life.

Eric Carle’s birthday is on June 25th.

“I had come to the conclusion that I didn’t want to sit in meetings, write memos, entertain clients, and catch commuter trains. I simply wanted to create pictures.”

As a little boy in Stuttgart, Germany, during the Nazi leadership of Adolf Hitler, Eric endured dark times. But, his father would show him living creatures and how to respect life and nature as he took him for walks across meadows and through woods. Eric’s artwork is splashed with brilliantly colored living animals as an honor to his father and to recapture those happy times.

Eric creates his art work using a collage technique with hand-painted papers. He cuts and layers them to form cheery and vivid pictures. Sometimes he creates an interactive book—a toy that can be read. To this end, he uses such effects as die-cut pages, twinkling lights, and even a playful cricket’s song.

He truly understands the thoughts and feelings of children, and draws on this heartfelt concern and his love of nature, to achieve each positive message in his books. His desire is to bridge the gap between home—warmth, security, toys, being held, and protection—and school, with its fear of the unknown.

Eric has illustrated more than seventy books—most bestsellers, and most of which he wrote. More than 110 million copies of his books have sold around the world, with translations in more than 50 languages.

Eric divides his time between the Florida Keys and the hills of North Carolina with his wife, Barbara. He has two grown-up children.