Eric Carle, author of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’, dies at 91

Eric Carle, the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has died at the age of 91, his family has confirmed.

Mr Carle, a designer, illustrator and author of a string of popular children’s books, including Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, died on Sunday.

“In the light of the moon, holding on to a good star, a painter of rainbows, is now traveling across the night sky,” his family said in tribute on his website.

Mr Carle died at his summer studio in Northampton, Massachusetts, from kidney failure, his son Rolf told The New York Times

His most famous book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, came out in 1969 and is one of the best selling children’s books of all time with more than 55m copies sold.

And in total he wrote and illustrated more than 70 books, which sold more than 170m copies around the world.

His career as a children’s book author only became successful when he was in his late 30s, and he said he was inspired by things he had seen as a young boy.

“I had a lot of feelings, philosophical thoughts — at the age of 6,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1985.

“The only way I got older and wiser was that I got better trained. But that brain and soul were at their peak.”

In The Very Hungry Caterpillar, children were taken on the metamorphosis of a green and red caterpillar into a multi-coloured butterfly, and everything it ate along the way.

“The unknown often brings fear with it,” Mr Carle once said.

“In my books I try to counteract this fear, to replace it with a positive message. I believe that children are naturally creative and eager to learn. I want to show them that learning is really both fascinating and fun.”

Mr Carle’s publisher, Penguin Kids, paid tribute to him on Twitter.

“Thank you for sharing your great talent with generations of young readers,” they tweeted.

Mr Carle was born in Syracuse, New York, but grew up in Germany after his mother grew homesick.

HIs father was drafted into the German army and was captured by Soviet forces when the war came to an end in 1945.