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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,” a family statement said.

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