WRB—Children’s Literature Supplement, Aug. 2025

“your skills have value”

The earth is drenched in butterflies. Sarah’s knowledge extends to monarchs and swallowtails, but myriad other types seem to be crossing her path these days—dancing outside her windows and spinning across the sky as she zips down the highway. ’Tis August, and the butterflies know it. Sarah knows its August because of the cicadas, perched here, there, and everywhere, rasping away, reminding us that summer is winding to a close. It’s funny that bugs and insects are on her mind—it should be horses, because of a curriculum she’s teaching this fall—and some of today’s book suggestions fit nicely into this train of thought. Even though so many children are already back in school, consider this your final summer hurrah from us at the CLS, and we’ll bring you a back-to-school edition in a month. (Or, at least, valiantly attempt one.)

Famished insects

Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1969) is ubiquitous in the children’s picture book world. Its status as a dearly loved book is well-deserved, but did you know that without the help of the Japanese children’s book culture, this book might not have made it out into the world? Back in March (we here at the CLS are slow readers), the esteemed Leonard S. Marcus wrote about this fascinating connection for the New York Times:

Japan’s influence was felt in the United States in other meaningful ways as well. In 1968, when the art director turned picture book creator Eric Carle presented his editor, Ann Beneduce, with the concept for an alluring design-forward novelty book for preschoolers called The Very Hungry Caterpillar, she was instantly intrigued but recognized the unfeasibility of manufacturing it domestically (the standard practice then). Fortunately, Beneduce had a global outlook. That summer, she hand-delivered Carle’s idiosyncratic dummy, with its array of die-cut holes and different-sized pages, to Hiroshi Imamura, then president of Kaiseisha Publishing in Tokyo, and returned home with an on-budget plan. If not for the determined efforts of Beneduce and her Japanese colleagues, Carle’s caterpillar book, which has now reached readers in more than 65 foreign-language editions, might never have happened. Beneduce later introduced Americans to the work of modern-day Japan’s greatest picture book creator, Mitsumasa Anno, whose Anno’s Journey and other wordless, scroll-like books cunningly blend Eastern and Western narrative art elements for the stated goal of “bridging” national and cultural divides.

The whole piece is well worth your time, and it made Sarah even more determined to visit the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art someday.

Also, while she’s fairly certain that most readers of this newsletter have a cherished copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar lying around, Sarah was delighted by this animated video of the tale.

Allan Ahlberg, R.I.P.

Over at The Telegraph, Amanda Craig mourns the passing of another beloved children’s book author and writes about the impact he (and his first wife, Janet) had on the genre:

Ahlberg’s gentle wit mixed the mundane with the fantastical. His ebullient child heroes and resourceful underdogs are incarnations of a strong moral core that has become lost or confused today. For instance, one of the better picture-books this year is Bethan Woollvin’s gender-switched Robin Hood, whose girl protagonist (wearing a black bob strangely similar to that of Rachel Reeves) is justified in stealing from the Sheriff because he’s stealing from the poor.

A few years ago, Sarah couldn’t believe her luck when she found Each Peach, Pear, Plum (1978) and The Jolly Postman (1986) at a barn sale, and she hopes you will check out these, as well as other Ahlberg titles.

A sweet fairytale

Poking around on the Atlas Obscura website is always an adventure, and it a few weeks ago, it yielded a lovely treat in the form of a new fairytale for Sarah. A few years ago, it seems Atlas Obscura organized a “Children’s Literature Week,” and ran all manner of pieces for it. One that caught Sarah’s eye was “What Children’s Book Do You Remember That No One Else Does?” She didn’t recognize much on the list, but one title caught her attention: The Ordinary Princess (1980) by M. M. Kaye. As a lover of George MacDonald’s The Light Princess (1864), Ford Madox Ford’s The Queen Who Flew (1894), and A. A. Milne’s Once on a Time (1917), she’s always on the lookout for short little fairytales. Kaye’s offering did not disappoint.

What the kids are reading