Ten Little Caterpillars

Ten Little Caterpillars
By Bill Martin Jr.
Illustrated by Lois Ehlert
Beach Lane Books
Published 2011

What can you say about a book by two undisputed giants in the field of children’s literature? It has to be good, right? Well…I have to say this book isn’t my favorite. For starters, the first line of the book starts with, “The first little caterpillar crawled into a bower.” I know a lot of words, but I have to admit, I needed to look up a definition for bower. I had a good guess, but it just is not one of those words you use every day. And I doubt most preschoolers know what it is either. I understand Martin wanted to rhyme with “flower”, but was it absolutely necessary to do it on the very first page?

On the good side, the book is a work of art. Ehlert provides simple, yet intriguing paper cut art against a white background so each page is dramatic and interesting. The main text is bold and brief, but there is some underlying text that is hidden amongst the illustrations that help to identify types of leaves, birds, plants and more. So I could see using this book in one of two ways. I doubt the incredibly simple storyline would hold the interest of a preschool group, but I could imagine using it for a gathering of 2-3 year olds. The storyline is simple enough and the illustrations are bold enough to hold this group from start to finish. And I think it would be a great experience to share this book with a preschooler on a one-on-one basis. This would allow the reader and preschooler to linger over each page, talk about the details of the subtext and allow some dialogic reading to take place.

I’ve seen better from both of these artists and hope the next book they put together has a bit more of a plot to the storyline. Whereas “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?” has an easy-to-learn hook that has kids chanting along, this caterpillar book is sort of stuck in a cocoon.