Now, in its second turn at the Pittsburgh museum, the show will occupy around 2,000 square feet in the traveling gallery, where visitors can follow the caterpillar\u2019s path, weave alongside the busy spider and experiment with Carle\u2019s signature collage process.<\/p>\n
Anne Fullenkamp, the museum\u2019s senior director of creative experiences, who helped design \u201cVery Eric Carle\u201d and now oversees its travel and return, said visitors will see Carle\u2019s artwork throughout, with each of the \u201cVery\u201d books presented as a large-scale experience. Children can feel as if they are entering the books and encountering the stories from the perspective of the featured characters.<\/p>\n
While Carle\u2019s books may appear simple, they are often layered with themes of loneliness, belonging and persistence. \u201cThe Very Hungry Caterpillar,\u201d for example, explores hope, reassurance and transformation. Fullenkamp said that when designing activities centered on such abstract ideas, she aims to make them tangible and relatable. \u201cWe wanted to create a setting where kids and their adults can practice skills and have meaningful conversations,\u201d she said. \u201cOur approach for this exhibit was to identify the singular trait of each \u2018Very\u2019 story and use the images and words to recreate the setting.\u201d<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Very Hungry Caterpillar,\u201d the caterpillar \u2014 the exhibition\u2019s star and the first character visitors encounter \u2014 leads children through the book\u2019s pages one by one as they navigate through heavy-duty fabric panels, creating a tunnellike passage. They emerge at a butterfly shadow-theater activity where they can design butterfly wings using colors and shapes inspired by the artist\u2019s paper-collage style.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Very Quiet Cricket\u201d turns the gallery into a miniature orchestra. Children can touch a floor-to-ceiling wall mural of the cricket and its insect friends to create a musical composition of rhythms and insect sounds from nature.<\/p>\n
Next comes \u201cThe Very Lonely Firefly,\u201d where visitors are invited to move their hands and bodies before an interactive video to lure a firefly toward their glow. \u201cWhen kids are in front of the video and work with others, multiple fireflies come together to form a group, reinforcing the theme of friendship that is presented in the book,\u201d Fullenkamp said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now, in its second turn at the Pittsburgh museum, the show will occupy around 2,000 square feet in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[6889,14809,79152,79151,24174,73981,10533,73,16712,75,74,79153],"class_list":{"0":"post-177049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-books-and-literature","10":"tag-carle","11":"tag-children-and-childhood","12":"tag-childrens-museum-of-pittsburgh","13":"tag-eric","14":"tag-museums","15":"tag-pittsburgh","16":"tag-pittsburgh-pa","17":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","18":"tag-pittsburgh-news","19":"tag-the-very-hungry-caterpillar-book"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}