Some of Today’s Most Beloved Children’s Book Illustrators Each Draw Their Favorite Animal
By Maria Popova
I have a soft spot for animals and the loveliest books about them, but having just said farewell to a beloved feline companion, I was triply taken with What’s Your Favorite Animal? (public library), in which the great Eric Carle invites some of today’s most celebrated children’s book illustrators — including Jon Klassen, Peter Sís, Lucy Cousins, and Lane Smith — to each draw their favorite animal
A simple concept, but an infinitely delightful and rewarding execution.
Carle contextualizes his own selection with a heart-warming anecdote:
I have always liked animals. But cats are my favorites. I have a photograph of myself when I was three years old, holding a couple of kittens. And I am sneezing. I must have been allergic to them, but my mother claimed I had a cold.
Later when I was grown up, Fiffi lived with me in my Greenwich Village New York City walk-up. Fiffi was a long-haired black beauty. One day when I was peeling string beans in the kitchen, she showed great interest in my task. After a while she even began to meow ever so slightly. It sounded like begging to me. Finally I threw a string bean down the long hallway. Fiffi chased after it, fetched it, and returned it to me. Again I threw the string bean down the hallway. Finally, after many chases, Fiffi picked up the string bean, ignored me, and walked into the closet. She placed it into a shoe of mine. Then she curled herself around the shoe and went to sleep, guarding the string bean.
Jon Klassen, enchanter of the ordinary, goes for the underduck:
Most times when you see a duck in a story, it’s not very smart. Usually it is in the middle of falling for a trick somebody is playing on it. But I like ducks. I like watching them walk around.
Sís relays the heartening twist on a peculiar national custom behind his choice:
I am from the Czech Republic where people eat carp every Christmas Eve. It is a tradition. Just before the Christmas holidays, giant barrels with live carp are set up in the streets so people can buy one and bring it home fresh. There, they let the carp swim in the bathtub Christmas Eve. The carp would look all blue and lonely in the bathtub, and we, the children, would be fascinated and give her a name and try to put our little fingers in her toothless, breathing mouth. What usually happened on Christmas Eve when the carp is supposed to become dinner was that the children would cry, go on strike, and finally the carp would be taken by the whole family to the river Vltava and released. You would see many families coming with their carps to the river and blue fish swimming toward the ocean. This gave us all hope! So my favorite creature of hope is the blue carp.
What’s Your Favorite Animal? is absolutely wonderful from cover to cover. Complement it with 2013’s best books about animals.
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Published January 30, 2014
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https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/30/eric-carle-favorite-animal/
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