Heidi Hart

I have a theory: all the socks that disappear in the dryer magically reappear, through some mystical household alchemy, as Eric Carle board books. It's the only explanation for why my kids have so many of them, because Lord knows I would never buy a single one of these books, much less the dozen or so that populate my sons' bookcase. 

Until I became a mom, I didn't have any opinion of Eric Carle. I'd read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and had seen the Caterpillar-related marketing (stuffed animals and the like) at book stores and toy stores, and maybe thought "oh how sweet" if I thought much of anything at all. 

Now, though? Now that I have read The Very Boring Quiet Cricket to my baby again and again (not nearly as entertained as baby is by the "surprise" ending), and suffered through the insufferably bratty and entitled protagonist of Papa please get the moon for me, and gritted my teeth through countless rehashing of The Tiny Seed's and Little Cloud's metamorphoses, I have a very strong, very visceral opinion about Eric Carle. Even the formerly-innocuous Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear set my teeth on edge. The pictures are okay, but the text is so interminably boring. 

Other parents, grandparents, teachers, aunts, uncles, big siblings, baby sitters: am I alone in this? Or, if you don't share my hatred of Eric Carle, who would you nominate for "Most Overrated Children's Author"?