Eric Carle, the US author of best-selling children’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has died aged 91.
He passed away last Sunday, his family said.
“In the light of the moon, holding on to a good star, a painter of rainbows is now travelling across the night sky,” the BBC quoted a family statement as saying.
Carle’s most famous book, which tells the story of a ravenous caterpillar, was published in 1969 and has sold more than 50 million copies.
The simple but everlasting tale – just 224 words long – has been translated into 62 languages.
Carle’s son Rolfe told the New York Times his father had died in Northampton, Massachusetts, of kidney failure.
Born in Syracuse, New York,Carle began writing children’s books in his late 30s.
