What's Your Favorite Animal?

New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014 Illustrated by fourteen children's book illustrators including Eric Carle, Mo Willems, Lucy Cousins, Erin Stead, Rosemary Wells, and others. First edition, second printing. Presentation copy, signed and inscribed by Eric Carle to his Florida neighbors and close friends, Ed and Irene Staffin, in black ink on p. [1]: "For Irene & Ed, with best wishes Eric Carle". Publisher's white pictorial boards, with illustrations by the fourteen featured illustrators of their favorite animals to boards, and yellow endpapers; in its original white pictorial dust jacket, with a cat illustration by Eric Carle to front panel, lettered in black, blue, red, green, and purple. Fine book; fine unclipped dust jacket, with just a touch of staining to top right corner of front panel. Overall, a superb copy of a work that brings together some of the foremost illustrators of children's picture books. In this collaborative effort, fourteen famous children's picture book illustrators present their favorite animals in their characteristic style and explain why they love them. The authors include Eric Carle, Nick Bruel, Lucy Cousins, Susan Jeffers, Steven Kellogg, Jon Klassen, Tom Lichtenheld, Peter McCarty, Chris Raschka, Peter Sís, Lane Smith, Erin Stead, Rosemary Wells, and Mo Willems. Notably, all the royalties from this book went to The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, located in Amherst, Massachusetts. Eric Carle (1929-2021) illustrated more than 70 children's books, many of which he also wrote, including The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1969), which is recognized as one of the most popular and commercially successful children's books of all time. Carle used an innovative illustrating process, in which he "usually began with plain tissue paper, painting it with different colors of acrylic paint. Working with brushes, fingers, or miscellaneous objects-like a piece of carpet, sponge, or burlap-he would cover the tissue paper with different textures" (The New York Times, 2021). Overcoming a harrowing childhood in Nazi Germany, Carle moved to New York City in his early 20s with an art school degree and $40. His breakthrough opportunity came when children's book author Bill Martin Jr. spotted a red lobster that he had illustrated in a magazine and subsequently asked him to illustrate Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (1967). Eric married Barbara "Bobbie" Morrison (1938-2015), who worked as a Montessori teacher and adoption caseworker, in 1973. The two co-founded The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Massachusetts in 2002. In 2003, Eric and Barbara purchased a home overlooking the ocean in Tavernier, Florida on Key Largo, which Eric transformed into "a sleek collage of Brazilian Ipe wood, concrete and steel" with the help of designer Luis Pons (The New York Times, 2007). The couple spent most of their later years at that residence. From 2004 to 2012, Ed and Irene Staffin lived in Tavernier, where they were neighbors and close friends with the Carles. In one letter to the Staffins, Barbara recalls a dinner that Ed and Irene hosted for her and Eric, calling it "an act of love," and goes on to praise the unpretentious atmosphere of the evening, writing "...there was an absence of egos, and people really cared about making contact and not upstaging, how very civilized, and sane, it all was." . Inscribed by Author. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Dust Jacket Included.