You know what else Eric Carle’s work is? Reproducible by children. That “blobby” colorful style is pretty much designed for young and clumsy hands to mimic and copy and engage with.
I have memories from kindergarten of cutting out pieces of tissue paper to make our own hungry caterpillar puppets. Of painting blocky, recognizable fruit and treats in watercolors for my caterpillar to eat.
Of coloring pages with brown bears and green frogs and purple cats and being able to show them off and being so proud because look! I made art like a real artist!
And his anatomy and proportions are amazing! Look at the animals of Brown Bear. You could overlay a photo of a real brown bear over Eric Carle’s illustrations and the silhouettes would be near perfect! And because they’re looking at blocks of color and not detailed lines, little kids can easily get closer to how animals actually look by imitating those large shapes than by trying to copy a more realistic illustration.
This is art made to encourage kids to participate in making art!
We absolutely don’t stand for Eric Carle libel in this house.
ETA: I had to look up insalubrious. It means unwholesome. That’s it. Another phrase that would have worked is “disease ridden.”
As someone with a large vocabulary, an Ivy League degree, and a job that is all about using words correctly, there are situations where you should use the pretentious word because it is more accurate or has connotations that the more common word does not. This was not one of them.
That is a ten dollar word where a ten cent one would suffice. In my world, we call that bad writing.
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
janainaart
areudirty
origamiaround
theartofmadeline
dededos
