Fiction - Animals - Insects

The Grouchy Ladybug

Name: The Grouchy Ladybug
Author: Eric Carle
ISBN: 9780694007165

by Eric Carle

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Overview

It's the Grouchy Ladybug's 20th birthday. To celebrate, we are introducing a new, larger format edition with brighter, more colorful pages created from Eric Carle's original artwork using the latest reproduction technology. The Grouchy Ladybug is bigger and brigher, as irascible but irresistable as ever and will surely delight new generations of readers, as well as her devoted fans of all ages. Happy Birthday, Grouchy Ladybug!

A grouchy ladybug, looking for a fight, challenges everyone she meets regardless of their size or strength.

About the Author, Eric Carle

Eric Carle is the creator of more than seventy picture books for young readers.

Eric Carle was born in New York, USA. However, when he was just six, he moved with his parents to Germany. In 1952, after graduating from the prestigious Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart, he fulfilled his dream of returning to New York.

Eric Carle has received many distinguished awards and honours for his work, including, in 2003, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his lifetime contribution to children's literature and illustration.

In 2002, fifty years after Carle's return to the United States, The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art was opened in Amherst, Massachusetts. Here visitors of all ages can enjoy, in addition to Eric Carle's work, original artwork by other distinguished children's book illustrators from around the world.

Eric Carle es el creador de más de setenta libros ilustrados para niños.

Nació en Syracuse, Nueva York, pero a los seis años de edad se trasladó con sus padres a Alemania. En 1952, tras graduarse de la prestigiosa Akademie der Bildenden Künste de Stuttgart, logró cumplir su sueño de regresar a Nueva York.

Ha recibido muchos e importantes premios y distinciones, entre ellos el Laura Ingalls Wilder Award en 2003, por su aportación global a la literatura y a la ilustración infantil.

En 2002, cincuenta años después de su regreso a los Estados Unidos, se inauguró en Amherst, Massachusetts, el Museo Eric Carle de Libros Ilustrados, donde se exhibe, además de la obra completa de Eric Carle, unbuen número de originales de los más destacados ilustradores de libros infantiles del mundo entero.

Biography

Ever since he began innovating the look and function of children's stories in the late 1960s, Eric Carle has remained an author whose stories reliably hit the bestseller lists and remain on kids' bookshelves through generations.

He began as a designer of promotions and ads, and one illustration of a red lobster helped jump-start his career. The lobster caught the eye of author Bill Martin, Jr.; Martin asked Carle to illustrate the now-classic 1967 title Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and a career was born.

Born in Syracuse, New York but brought by his immigrant parents back to Germany when he was six, Carle was educated in Stuttgart and designed posters for the United States Information Center there after graduating from art school. He finally returned to the country he missed so much as a child in 1952.

He eventually began procuring work on children's titles, and found himself becoming increasingly involved in them. "I felt something of my own past stirring in me," he wrote in a 2000 essay. "An unresolved part of my own education needed reworking, and I began to make books -- books for myself, books for the child in me, books I had yearned for. I became my own teacher -- but this time an understanding one."

He began his career with the 1968 title 1, 2, 3 to the Zoo; but his next title, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, is what still endears him to young readers today. Employing his bright, collage style and lending an immediacy to the tale by manifesting the caterpillar's hunger in actual holes in the pages, Carle began what would be a long career of creative approaches to simple stories. From the chirp emerging from The Very Quiet Cricket to the delightful fold-out pages in Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, Carle's books provide surprises that make his stories come alive in ways that many titles for preschoolers do not.

Carle's style, with its diaphanous, busy and bold artwork, is perfect for engaging new readers. His stories are also popular with parents and educators for their introductions to the natural world and its cycles. It's a particular pleasure to follow Carle into different corners of the world and see what can be learned from the creatures who live in them.

Good To Know

Regularly asked where he gets his ideas, Carle is quoted on his publisher's web site as responding: "Of course, the question of where ideas come from is the most difficult of all. Some people like to say they get ideas when they're in the shower. That's always a very entertaining answer, but I think it's much deeper than that. It goes back to your upbringing, your education, and so forth." He does say, however, that the idea for The Very Hungry Caterpillar came when he whimsically began punching holes in some paper, which suggested to him a bookworm at work. His editor later suggested he change the bookworm to a caterpillar, and the rest is history.

Carle was unhappy to be in Germany when his immigrant parents brought him back there as a child. He hated his new school and wanted to go back to America. He said: "When it became apparent that we would not return, I decided that I would become a bridge builder. I would build a bridge from Germany to America and take my beloved German grandmother by the hand across the wide ocean."

Before he became a freelance illustrator and began working on children's books, Carle worked as a graphic designer for the New York Times and as art director of an ad agency.

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Editorials

Children's Literature - Children's Literature

A perennial favorite from a master of children's books, The Grouchy Ladybug has recently been reissued. Eric Carle's story is great for the toddler years; it is the perfect time to introduce his work. His bright collages, simple words, and understanding of young emotional development are winning combinations. Come meet the Grouchy Ladybug who will introduce animals, time, and moods to an eager and receptive audience. 1995, HarperCollins, Ages 1 to 3, $14.50, $11.86, $7.95, and $6.95. Reviewer: Susie Wilde

Children's Literature - Debra Briatico

In this new edition of the classic tale, a bad-tempered ladybug tries to pick a fight with increasingly bigger animals (starting with a ladybug and ending with a whale), until she has some sense knocked into her. This humbling experience transforms her into a happier bug with better manners and a kinder disposition. Other concepts introduced in this story include size, color, time, elements of the food cycle, and social behavior.

Children's Literature - Jeanne K. Pettenati

Two ladybugs meet on a leaf in search of some aphids for breakfast. The friendly ladybug is happy to share but the grouchy ladybug wants them all for herself. When the friendly ladybug accepts a challenge to fight for them, the grouchy ladybug backs off, stating, "Oh, you're not big enough for me to fight." She then goes off in search of something bigger to pick on. Throughout the day the grouchy ladybug approaches a series of insects and animals, each one bigger than the one before, looking for a fight. When each accepts her challenge, she backs off until she is tired, wet and hungry and decides to return to the original leaf. The grouchy ladybug is humbled and even thanks the friendly ladybug for sharing the aphids. The illustrations are bright and bold. Die-cut pages allow children to visually assess the gradual progression of tiny to large characters in the animal world.

Children's Literature - Marilyn Courtot

The grouchy ladybug is making her board book debut. She is an unpleasant personality who won't share, is belligerent, and doesn't know how to say please or thank you. The story begins very early in the morning with two lady bugs arriving to feast on a bunch of aphids covering a leaf. The grouchy ladybug won't share and she heads off to pick on someone bigger to fight. She travels for twenty-four hours and ends up right back where she started and somewhat more contrite. In this amusing story, there are lessons about the passage of time, relative sizes, and the importance of manners and good humor. Clocks appear in the upper corners showing the passage of time and the board book pages increase in size as do the creatures the ladybug challenges. It is all delivered in a nondidactic manner through Carle's beautiful collages. 1999 (orig.