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There are few children’s books more beloved than Eric Carle’s
The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Since its original publication in 1969, it has sold upwards of 50 million copies. Carle’s combination of beautifully constructed collages, elegantly simple prose, and cleverly holey pages has formed a magical part of an unfathomable number of childhoods.
Yet when you consider exactly what the caterpillar eats, it’s hard not to think that, rather than ending the story as a beautiful butterfly, the titular insect would meet an untimely end by rupturing open and dying horribly, his little caterpillar guts spilling from his torn, distended flesh.