Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

I see an artist that paints like he's three!

Why is Eric Carle famous?  His illustrations are absolutely horrific.  Just take a second and look at the Picasso-esque bear above and know that comparing Carle's work to Picasso is not a compliment.  Everything after Pablo's "Rose Period" looked worse than any bear, firefly, or hungry caterpillar that Carle ever brought into existence.

The only thing worse than having to look at the poor punishment that Carle inflicted upon the paper found in his books is having to read the mind-numbing words of his partner Bill Martin Jr.   In Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?, Martin uses a combination of 36 different words.  Ten of these words are repeated ten times using the same formula:

(Insert Animal Here), (Repeat previous animal's name here)
What do you hear?
I hear a (Insert the name of whatever poorly drawn animal is on the next page)
(Making a noise) in my ear.

I will give Carle credit for being a better author than he is an artist.  We also have a copy of Little Cloud that my daughter loves to read.   Fortunately, it is nowhere near as formulaic as Martin's work, but, it loses Daddy points for not rhyming.  If only he would have subcontracted the illustrations.



Little Cloud may actually be a work of genius.  His pictures accurately portray the amount of imagination you need to use to turn white blobs into meaningful shapes.

Eric Carle has illustrated over 70 books and sold more than 103 million copies worldwide.   This fact confirms my theory that you can label something art and somebody, somewhere will be willing to buy it.  Thankfully, our books came from yardsales.

If you like crappy art and horrible stories, you'll love these books:
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; 25th Anniversary Edition
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? My First Reader
The Greedy Python
The Grouchy Ladybug