Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is a museum devoted to the art of the picture book and especially the children's book. It is a member of Museums10 and is adjacent to the campus of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. The Carle was founded by Eric and Barbara Carle, and designed by Juster Pope Frazier Architects. Together with his wife Barbara (1938-2015), Eric Carle, the author and illustrator of more than 70 books, including the 1969 classic "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", founded the museum. It was the first full-scale museum in
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