Mike S. (mikesmith) reviewed on 11/10/2009 + 50 more book reviews

Eric Carle was the art director of an advertising agency before Bill Martin Jr. asked him to illustrate a book of his. I think his work feels like the work of an ad. executive too--it has a distinctive artistic style, but is really not very original. His stories are bland and unexciting, and mostly forgettable. He is certainly not one of those children's authors like Dr. Seuss or Arnold Lobel or David Wiesner that adults can actually enjoy when they read them to kids. Carle's an unoriginal thinker who's never made a single stylistic variation from his original aesthetic, and whose stories are just lazy--a caterpillar becoming a butterfly? Four identically structured books about what a bear sees and hears? Kill me.

There are exceptions, I think, to his general lameness--The co-written "Very Greedy Python" has a unique ending, and there are one or two others--but he doesn't deserve the hype, and his books are best-suited for the very, very young, so board books only.

Oh, and MISTER SEAHORSE is not one of the great ones. It's pretty bland, if you ask me.

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