building the book cathedral david macaulay

Almost overnight, a dubious proposition became an irresistible opportunity.Ī year and a half later, I was finished with both books. Although I declined the colorization option, the possibility of seeing those two imposing structures and their builders in full color was just too intriguing. And in 1973, when Cathedral was published, black and white was the only realistic way of producing such a large book by an unknown author/illustrator. Building up layers of line is what you do when you don’t have color to work with.

I considered the proposal, but it felt wrong to layer color over cross-hatching, no matter how subtle the colors might be. The most obvious way of breathing new life into the books was to add color to the more staid and I suppose slightly old-fashioned pen-and-ink drawings. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file.Ĭathedral had been in print for more than thirty-five years and Castle for more than thirty when the vigilant people at HMH broached the subject of refreshing those old chestnuts. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016. Text and illustration © 1973, 2010, and © renewed 2002 by David MacaulayĪll rights reserved. This title has been selected as a Common Core text exemplar (Grades 6–8, Informational Texts: Science, Mathematics, and Technical Studies) Read more “David Macaulay is nothing less than America’s Explainer-in-Chief.” - Providence Journal “Fascinating detail.” - The New York Times Journey back to a long-ago world and visit the fictional people of twelfth-, thirteenth-, and fourteenth-century Europe whose dreams, like Cathedral, stand the test of time. One of the New York Times’s Best Illustrated Books of the Yearįrom the author of The Way Things Work, whose books have won numerous awards and sold millions of copies-and delighted readers young and old alike-this is a lively, detailed, and lavishly illustrated account of the building of a cathedral, and the community around it, through many decades.Ĭaldecott Medal winner David Macaulay’s imaginary Cathedral of Chutreaux remains a touchstone for budding architects as well as those interested in medieval history. Recreates the building of a French Gothic cathedral from half a forest to the last sheet of lead on the spire” ( Time).

Building the book cathedral david macaulay