AMHERST, Mass. - "I would like to visit you," an ardent fan wrote to Eric Carle, author of toddler classics such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar. "But I'm not allowed to cross the street."
Another fan wrote to tell Carle: "You and I are a lot alike. I like color, you like color. I like stories, you like stories."
Who says the under-5 set can't be cognoscenti of high art? Or at least renderings of a churlish ladybug and a butter-fingered click beetle.
But that is only one sliver of the audience that Carle hopes to entice with his latest venture, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, which opened here Nov. 22. The museum says it is the first in the country dedicated to the work of luminaries for little people, including Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) and Leo Lionni (Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse). It hopes to create a full-fledged art genre from what has previously been exhibited only in small collections.
"Children's literature and art forms are really considered secondary art forms, but at their best they really are as important as adult literature," said H. Nichols B. Clark, the museum's director.
"This is not a children's museum as we know it," he said. "We're not just trying to engage the 3-year-old, we're trying to engage the 30-year-old and the 60-year-old. We want to give people tools they can take to any museum in the world."
The 40,000-square-foot museum is set on 7.5 acres in an apple orchard next to Hampshire College. Donors raised $11.5 million of the $22 million needed to build and endow the museum. They include the Eric and Barbara Carle Foundation, Penguin Putnam Inc. and HarperCollins, as well as 600 individuals (including a little girl who sent in 25 pennies and a family that donated $100,000).
The modern geometric building is bright white outside and in, an allusion to the crisp white background Carle uses in books to showcase the bold, colorful animals and figures in his tissue-paper collages. The lobby is hung with his 8-by-16-foot collages.
There is a 130-seat auditorium with stage-side floor space for children where puppet shows and storytellers play off the works in the art galleries.
While the three galleries make some concessions to children, like hanging the pictures a few inches lower than standard museum height, there is a concerted effort to portray picture books as vessels of serious art.
"I have friends that say, 'Oh, this weekend I'm going to knock out a kiddie book,'" said Carle, an avuncular 73-year-old with trim white beard and rimless glasses. "Obviously, I'm on the other end of things."
The display includes works from 14 of his 70 books and a painting of laborers by the French modernist Fernard Leger, which inspired Carle's picture book My Apron. This show will run through April 23, though some of his art will always be on display.
The gallery displaying Sendak's finely detailed drawings (through Jan. 12) juxtaposes some of his pictures with art by Winslow Homer, Albrecht Durer and William Blake.
The galleries, kept in low light to protect the artwork, will display little if any of the text of the stories, although some books may be left out. Signs encourage children and adults to interpret what they see.
Ultimately Carle says he hopes the ethos of a museum that celebrates children's books as art will creep like one of his caterpillars into the consciousness of adults and children alike.
"It's the little things that make a big change," he said. "Accidental things that might happen that inspire you to something. You look at the ceiling, follow the cracks in the wall and make a story out of it and it makes you feel satisfaction. I'm suspicious of people who want to change the world in one stroke."