The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Name of Book: The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Author: Eric Carle
Illustrator: Eric Carle
Publisher: Scholastic
Audience: Ages 2 and up
Summary: This is a story of a caterpillar’s life. The caterpillar hatches from an egg, grows through eating, and then builds a cocoon for himself. After a bit of time, he emerges as a beautiful butterfly.
Literary elements at work in the story: This is a short informational, picture book that works through the life cycle of one character, a caterpillar. It is told from the third person perspective by an omniscient narrator. It is a relatively accurate portrayal of the brief life cycle of a caterpillar, despite also being a picture book.
How does the perspective on gender/race/culture/economic/ability make a difference to the story? This is a fictional story about a male caterpillar. None of the other perspectives really pertain to this book.
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:17
Theology: Because of the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, we have a new life and a new relationship with God. We are also promised that physical death is not the end of our life. We will continue to live in and have relationship with God.
Faith Talk Questions:
- What happened to the caterpillar after he went into the cocoon?
- Did the caterpillar change or stay the same?
- When we have Jesus in our hearts, do we change or stay the same?
- Who made the caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly?
- Does God make us beautiful?
- How? (for older children/adolescents only)
Review prepared by Katie Todd, MDiv/MACE, Entering Cohort Fall 2005
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.