Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Bill Martin Jr. ~ Illustrated by Eric Carle1967

The BOOG is lucky enough to have older cousins which means sometimes she is awarded gratuitous hand me downs. Case in point, this super awesome board book copy of Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? The book was designed, very simply, to help toddlers relate colors to objects, which it accomplishes beautifully, but it also gave The BOOG the confidence to read to her mommy for a change! Since she knows all the words and animals she, very matter-of-factly, relays the entire story, and I don’t even have to utter a word.

To my astonishment, there is an actual back story involved with Brown Bear.

THEN......

NOW!

“Eventually, I started painting my own papers to achieve even greater texture and I began using archival quality materials. You can see these changes in the art work from these selected illustrations from Brown Bear where a history of how my style has evolved is evident.”

Carle reveals that there are actually 4 complete sets of art work for Brown Bear. Even further, he points out the technical process by which he creates his illustrations and how they have evolved throughout the years. He initially would use commercially available tissue papers in various shades of colors and add crayon and paint for texture but over time these papers faded and the rubber cement he was using discolored the papers and did not last very long. In short, he would have then redo art work for numerous other titles because the original work had faded and needed to be recreated for reprints. Fortunately, using archival materials made for more long-lasting art work and a more consistent design.

See, You learn something new everyday! ;)