By Eric Carle
The one nearly every child meets first: a little caterpillar eats its way through the week and turns into a butterfly.
A tiny caterpillar hatches out of an egg on a leaf, and it is hungry. So it eats. On Monday one apple, on Tuesday two pears, on and on through the week, and your child gets to poke a finger through the real holes Eric Carle punched right in the fruit. By Saturday it has worked through a whole spread of cake and ice cream and pie and given itself a stomachache. Then it eats one green leaf, feels better, wraps itself in a cocoon, and comes out a big beautiful butterfly.
For a child just falling for bugs, this is the first and gentlest way in, because it hands them the single most magical fact about insects: a fat little caterpillar becomes a butterfly. The pages are cut and holed so small fingers have something to do on every spread. And under the fun it is teaching counting, the days of the week, and what a cocoon is, without your child ever noticing they are learning a thing.