Happy 40th birthday, Very Hungry Caterpillar!

Eric Carle's web site.

Newsweek:

Carle was born in 1929 in Syracuse, N.Y., to immigrant parents from Germany. He remembers his first six years fondly: Mickey Mouse and Flash Gordon, family camping trips, the big windows in his kindergarten class. When he was 6, his mother got homesick and the family moved back to Stuttgart. They lived in a big, four-story house with many of his relatives. "My grandmother had nine sisters," Carle says. "I had an interesting, wacky family. They're all liars but wonderful storytellers." Carle had trouble adjusting to his new country. His first-grade teacher still haunts, especially because Carle once picked up a ringing phone, and the teacher lashed his palms with a bamboo switch in front of the class. "I was this free American kid," Carle says, "but I was careful after that."

When World War II broke out, Carle's father was drafted by the Germans and his family was engulfed in the chaos of war.

And Google is using a special logo today, too.