Eric Carle, creator of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, on making books children adore

Who said caterpillar? Eric Carle’s new picture book The Nonsense Show – a fresh and hilarious parade of flying fish, cat-taming mice and circus animals freed from all those silly rules – has had starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist and School Library Journal. On the release of the book, the author of children’s classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar reflects on a career that has spanned more than 40 years and included 75 books. Carle touches on his art-happy early childhood in the United States, his immigrant parents’ return to Germany when he was six, and his early career as a graphic designer and art director. He even reveals that his beloved caterpillar actually started out as a worm until his longtime editor, Ann Beneduce, urged him to think fluffier. “I had done a book about a green worm who ate holes through things. And that book was pretty much the way the caterpillar book is, except the ending,” he says. “She did not like a green worm. So we went back and forth, and she said, ‘How about a caterpillar?’ And I shouted, ‘Butterfly!’ So that’s how that was born.” He talks to Nara Schoenberg

What was your starting point for The Nonsense Show?

I don’t know. Life is full of nonsense, I think. I grew up in Nazi Germany, and my art teacher who had started out as a modern artist couldn’t teach that any more. He could only teach realistic and naturalistic art. (But) he invited me to his home and secretly showed me reproductions – abstractions, German expressionists, maybe Picasso. I don’t remember. But they just really appalled me because I’d never seen anything like it. I was used to pretty paintings with a mountain in the background. Although I was shocked, I always carried that day in my heart. Seeing this expressionist and surrealist and Impressionist art. And even though I was shocked, I knew he meant well for me. I was maybe 12 or 13, and that was an important moment in my life. So I like to do this for children too.

Now it’s hard for people to believe that you weren’t always a children’s author – but you had a career in advertising and design. Did you even think of writing children’s books while you were doing that?

No, never. I started out as a poster artist and I still view myself as a poster artist, because if you look at my covers and my illustrations, they are little posters. I worked as an art director in Germany for a magazine, and I came to this country and I worked for The New York Times, for their promotion department as a graphic designer. And then I was an art director for an advertising agency that specialised in pharmaceutical advertising and [author] Bill Martin saw one of my ads – it was a lobster, because people can be allergic to lobsters. He saw that and asked me to illustrate Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and I asked myself, “What if I was an author as well?” I developed all kinds of ideas and put them in a box. Then I started to freelance. I went to publishers and advertising agencies and graphic studios, and the publisher I went to was a small publisher – World Publishing – and the editor there was Ann Beneduce. She took me out to lunch. I said, “I also do children’s books.” I thought of my idea box. She said, “Bring it in.” That was the beginning of the caterpillar.