Parody interview circulated in earnest after Eric Carle's death

It was bad enough that author Eric Carle passed away, so we hate to pile on.

But if you saw, in the wake of his death, that story about how he didn’t want his famously very hungry caterpillar to suffer a stomachache, you should be aware that it’s actually not true.

Literary Hub reports that the screen shot comes from Clare Pollard’s Fierce Bad Rabbits: The Tales Behind Children’s Picture Books, which is a real book — but it quotes an invented interview with Carle that appeared in a magazine invented as an April Fool’s joke.

You can read more about the (again, not real) The Paris Review for Young Readers and its recent moment in the spotlight at Lit Hub.

Carle, who wrote and illustrated such classics as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Grouchy Ladybug, and The Very Busy Spider, died May 23 at the age of ninety-one.

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