The Mountain That Loved a Bird

Alice McLerran was an “Army brat” and moved every year or so – from Hawaii to Germany, from New York to Ecuador.She still leads a gypsy life, traveling the world with her physicist husband and dividing time between their home in New York and their “dacha” in the mountains of Oregon. She’s happy to visit schools anywhere! The McLerran cat, Shuwa, prefers to stay home.”Children often ask me how I started being a writer, and I tell them: by loving stories. My mother made up stories at bedtime, and my grandmother was a story-teller as well. I always read, and read, and read. I think most writers do. One bit of luck, I think, was that from the first I wrote for others. Over the years I made countless poems and little books as gifts. When you write for real readers, of course you want to do your best.”

Eric Carle is acclaimed and beloved as the creator of brilliantly illustrated and innovatively designed picture books for very young children. He is best known for The Very Hungry Caterpillar, From Head to Toe, and The Grouchy Ladybug. Eric Carle has illustrated more than seventy books, many bestsellers, most of which he also wrote. He has two grown-up children, a son and a daughter, and divides his time between the Florida Keys and the hills of North Carolina. Mr. Carle opened the celebrated Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Northampton, MA, to feature both his work and that of other esteemed children’s book artists.