Eric Carle 2009, celebrating the first day of spring. He also designed a "Google doodle" with autumnal theme for the use in Southern Hemisphere. "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" was chosen by Jumpstart for Young Children as the book for Read For the Record 2009 on October 8 of that year. The program encourages educators, librarians and parents to try to have as many as possible read the same book on the same day all over the world. Carle has won numerous awards for his work in children's literature, including the Japan Picture Book Award, the Regina Medal and the Lifetime Achievement Award
Eric Carle the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. Eric's father was drafted into the German army at the beginning of World War II (1939) and taken prisoner by the Soviet forces when Germany capitulated early in 1945 (the end of the war). He returned home late in 1947 weighing 85 pounds. "When he came back, he was a broken man," Carle told "The Guardian" years later. He was a "dead man, psychologically, physically devastated." Eric had been sent to the small town of Schwenningen to escape the bombings of Stuttgart. When he was 15 the German government conscripted boys of