REVIEW: What's Your Favorite Animal?

What's Your Favorite Animal? is an artistic partnership with Eric Carle and 14 beloved illustrators who share their favorite animal and why it earned that distinction. This well-crafted book is not only illustrated beautifully, showcasing a variety of different art styles, but what I also love about it is that it gives you a peek inside each artist's life and personality (with some laughs too). Plus, all of the royalties from the sale of this book are going to benefit The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts. Eric Carle and Friends include: Nick Bruel, Eric Carle, Lucy Cousins, Susan Jeffers, Steven Kellogg, Jon Klassen, Tom Lichtenheld, Peter McCarty, Chris Raschka, Peter Sis, Lane Smith, Erin Stead, Rosemary Wells, and Mo Willems. The original artwork will be exhibited at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art through the end of August 2014. 

In addition, to celebrate this new book, The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is accepting submissions for a digital exhibition of original artwork from people of all ages from all over the world depicting your favorite animal. See below for submission and image guidelines. To view the What's Your Favorite Animal? online exhibition click here.

For more information about The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, visit the website www.carlemuseum.org.

My favorite animal is the giraffe, what's yours?

The "What's Your Favorite Animal?" Project

In What’s Your Favorite Animal? a new book by Eric Carle & Friends, 14 amazing children’s book artists share their favorite animals.

We’d love for you to do the same!

For Spring 2014, The Carle is creating a special exhibition to celebrate this new book. We will showcase the original work of the 14 published artists as well as a digital exhibition from friends from around the world.

We invite people of all ages to submit a digital image of an original work of art depicting your own favorite animal. Your submission will be available on a digital screen in our gallery from April 8-August 31 and will be included in an online exhibition that will live on our museum’s blog.  Submissions will be accepted from now until August 1, 2014.

Thank you for your interest in this project. All royalties from What’s Your Favorite Animal?,published by Holt and Company, benefit The Carle and its educational programs!

In order to include your artwork in our digital exhibition, please submit high quality photos that are acceptable for viewing online. Due to submission volume and/or image quality, some submissions might not be included. 

Submission Guidelines

By submitting this digital image, for yourself or on behalf of a child, you are verifying that you are at least 18 years of age, that the artwork is original, and that you understand that this work will become the property of The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.  This image will be used in our galleries and online, and may be used in social media, promotional materials, and other forms of publication. Your image may be cropped. Due to submission volume and/or image quality, some submissions might not be included.

Image Guidelines: Single Submission

The image should include the artwork only; please crop as necessary so the artwork fills the frame. Please use a JPG file format not to exceed 2 MB. If submitting via your phone, iPad or tablet, select the "large" file format option. Email to favoriteanimal@carlemuseum.org. If for any reason this email option does not pop up prompting you to fill out information please be sure to provide this Artist's Information in your submission.

Image Guidelines: Group Submission

If you are submitting on behalf of multiple artists you are welcome to submit individual emails using the above guidelines or you can attach multiple files to a single email submission not to exceed 10 MB in total. (Your email provider may have stricter size restrictions.)

There must be one file per artwork; please use a JPG file format not to exceed 2 MB per file. A single image including multiple works of art will not be accepted. The image should include the artwork only; please crop as necessary so the artwork fills the frame. To credit individual artwork rename your image files using the following example: first name-last initial-age-title of work.jpg. If submitting via phone, iPad or tablet, select the "large" file format option.

Email to favoriteanimal@carlemuseum.org.  If for any reason this email option does not pop up prompting you to fill out information, please be sure to provide this Group Artist's Information in your submission.

In celebration of this project, The Carle is offering a free hardcover copy of the book to any classroom in Hampshire, Hampden, and Franklin Counties who plan to submit artwork. Teachers can contact Sandy Soderberg, The Carle’s marketing manager, directly at sandys@carlemuseum.org for their copy.

Questions?  Please email us at favoriteanimals@carlemuseum.org.