Eric Carle, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, dies at 91

Author and illustrator’s 70 books have sold more than 170 million copies around the world

Singer Justin Bieber and author Eric Carle attend the lighting of the Empire State Building to kickoff Jumpstart's Read For The Record Campaign on October 8, 2009 in New York City (Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for jumpstart)

Eric Carle, the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has died at the age of 91, his family has confirmed.

Carle, a designer, illustrator and author of a string of popular children’s books, including Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, died on Sunday.

“In the light of the moon, holding on to a good star, a painter of rainbows, is now traveling across the night sky,” his family said in tribute on his website.

Carle died at his summer studio in Northampton, Massachusetts, from kidney failure, his son Rolf told The New York Times

His most famous book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, came out in 1969 and is one of the best selling children’s books of all time with more than 55 million copies sold.

In total he wrote and illustrated more than 70 books, which have sold more than 170m copies around the world.

His career as a children’s book author only flourished when he was in his late thirties, and he said he was inspired by things he had seen as a young boy.

“I had a lot of feelings, philosophical thoughts — at the age of six,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1985.

“The only way I got older and wiser was that I got better trained. But that brain and soul were at their peak.”

In The Very Hungry Caterpillar, children were taken along on the metamorphosis of a green and red caterpillar into a multi-coloured butterfly, and everything it ate on the way.

“The unknown often brings fear with it,” Carle once said.

“In my books I try to counteract this fear, to replace it with a positive message. I believe that children are naturally creative and eager to learn. I want to show them that learning is really both fascinating and fun.”

Carle’s publisher, Penguin Kids, paid tribute to him on Twitter.

“Thank you for sharing your great talent with generations of young readers,” they tweeted.

Carle was born in Syracuse, New York, but grew up in Germany after his mother grew homesick.

His father was drafted into the German army and was captured by Soviet forces when the war came to an end in 1945.

“During the war, there were no colours,” Carle once told NPR.

“Everything was grey and brown. . . . Houses were camouflaged with greys and greens and brown-greens and grey-greens or brown-greens.”

Carle was 18 when his father came home from the Soviet camp weighing just 85 pounds.

“To this day I can barely enjoy a good meal because of thinking about my father,” he previously told The Independent.

He returned to the US in 1952 and got a job in advertising at The New York Times, and in 1967 did his first collaboration with writer Bill Martin Jr for Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?