David Macaulay
1946English Author and Illustrator of Books for
Children and Creator of Cathedral, The Way
Things Work, and The Way We Work
DAVID MACAULAY WAS BORN on December 2, 1946, in
Burton-on-Trent, a city in northern England. His parents
were James and Joan Macaulay. His father was an engineer and his mother was a homemaker. David is one of
three children, and has a sister and a brother.
18
DAVID MACAULAY
DAVID MACAULAY GREW UP in the town of Bolton,
where he lived with his family in a small house. He recalls that they spent lots of time together in the kitchen.
There, his parents fired their children’s imagination with
the joy and fascination of making things. His parents
taught him woodworking, drawing, knitting, and sewing.
Soon, David was making things, and taking them apart,
too. It was the start of his lifelong fascination with how
things work.
David’s parents also read to their children, and David
loved it. His favorite books included Robinson Crusoe and
Ned the Lonely Donkey.
DAVID MACAULAY WENT TO SCHOOL at Bolton Elementary School. He was a good student, and very good at a
subject that isn’t really studied anymore: “penmanship,”
the ability to write cursive. David was so good at it that he
won a national award.
When David was 11, his family moved to the United
States. They lived in New Jersey for a few years, then
moved to Cumberland, Rhode Island. David went to the
public schools, and by the time he got to high school,
he was pretty well known for his drawings of famous
people. His pencil sketches of the Beatles were favorites
with his friends.
After high school, Macaulay went to college at the
19
DAVID MACAULAY
Rhode Island School of Design, called “RISD.” There,
he studied architecture—the art and science of building. He loved his classes, and in his last year, traveled
to Italy to study. The buildings of ancient Rome and the
cathedrals of the Middle Ages fascinated him. He graduated with a degree in architecture in 1969.
FIRST JOBS: Macaulay didn’t have a job as an architect
after college. Instead, he worked at a variety of jobs. He
taught art at a junior high school. He did drawings for
an interior design company. And he started teaching at
RISD. He taught drawing and illustration at the school
for 25 years.
Macaulay was a wonderful teacher. He taught his
students that “seeing” meant “looking and thinking.” He
encouraged them to “ask themselves why things look
the way they do.” He wanted them to learn the difference between “what they see and what they think they
see.” That way, they could create their own art, out of
their own visions.
STARTING TO CREATE BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS:
After a few years of teaching, Macaulay decided to try
creating books. He chose children’s books, he says, because “it looked like the people doing that were having
the most fun.”
His first book, Cathedral, grew out of an idea he had
20
DAVID MACAULAY
for a fantasy story. Set hundreds of years ago, it featured
a little boy who gets locked into an ancient cathedral,
where the gargoyles come to life.
21
DAVID MACAULAY
Macaulay took the book to a man named Walter Lorraine at Houghton Mifflin publishers. Lorraine reviewed
the book, and told Macaulay to focus his book on the
cathedral instead of the boy.
CATHEDRAL: The result was Macaulay’s first book, Cathedral, published in 1973. He reveals the wonders of how
architects in the Middle Ages planned and built the amazing churches of their time. The words and drawings show
in great detail just what goes into constructing a cathedral. Set in an imaginary French town almost 700 years
ago, the book was a favorite with readers young and old.
They were eager for more from Macaulay.
CITY, PYRAMID, and UNDERGROUND: Macaulay continued to explore the wonders of how things are put together. City tells the story of how a Roman town was built.
Pyramid goes back to the times of the ancient Pharoahs
of Egypt, and describes the building of those massive,
fascinating structures. Underground explores what happens beneath the streets of a modern city, showing how
subways, electrical systems, and sewers work.
CASTLE and MILL: In Castle, Macaulay returns to the
Middle Ages. He explains how both a castle, and the
town that surrounds it, were built hundreds of years
ago. Readers follow along as Macaulay outlines, step-bystep, just how these ancient structures came to be. Mill
features the day-to-day workings of a New England mill
22
DAVID MACAULAY
town. Set in the 19th century, the book tells the story of
how mills are built, and how mill towns grew around
them.
23
DAVID MACAULAY
THE WAY THINGS WORK: One of Macaulay’s bestknown books is The Way Things Work, first published
in 1988. It describes how hundreds of machines are put
together, and the way they work. In diagrams and simple
explanations, Macaulay shows how something as simple as a lever, and as complex as a space ship, works.
Throughout the book, Macaulay places funny drawings
of wooly mammoths to explain the science behind the
machines. Once again, readers young and old loved
the book, and learned a lot, too. It was so popular that
Macaulay published an updated edition in 1998, The
New Way Things Work.
BLACK AND WHITE: In 1990, Macaulay published Black
and White. In the book, he tells four stories at the same
time. Each story develops on each two-page spread. The
reader has to figure out how the individual stories work,
and how they work together. Young readers loved the
book, and so did older ones. Macaulay won the Caldecott
Medal for Black and White. That’s one of the most important awards for an illustrator of children’s books.
ON FILM: In 2000, Macaulay hosted and narrated a television series called “Building Big.” In it, he took viewers on a tour of the world’s biggest structures: bridges,
tunnels, skyscrapers, domes, and dams. He and his
crew traveled to four continents to film the series. Once
again, he showed viewers the science behind some of
24
DAVID MACAULAY
25
DAVID MACAULAY
the world’s greatest structures. It was a great success.
It was full of information, and funny, too. It showed
Macaulay to be, as he described himself, “an explainer
first and an entertainer second.” He later published a
book based on the series, Building Big.
MOSQUE: In 2003, Macaulay published a book called
Mosque. It details the building of a mosque, a place of
worship for Muslims. The story takes place in a fictional
town in Turkey, in the 1500s. Macaulay says he was
moved to write the book after the attacks of September
11, 2001. He wanted to show how mosques, like other
religious structures, “are among humankind’s proudest
accomplishments.” He shows how the mosque functions
among all the buildings of the community. It helps unite
all the people, of all faiths and backgrounds, of the city.
THE WAY WE WORK: Macaulay’s most recent book is
called The Way We Work. In it, he explores another remarkable structure: the human body. He starts his examination with the body’s basic building block: the cell. Then
he explores how cells get food and get rid of waste.
Next, Macaulay explains the circulation system—
how blood flows through the body. Then he’s on to the
digestive system—how what we eat gets turned into
energy. He describes how energy is used, by the bones
and muscles. He covers some of the most complex systems, including the brain and the nervous system. Then
26
DAVID MACAULAY
he goes on to reproduction: how a human life starts, as
a cell. And that brings the book full circle, back to the
beginning, of life, and of the book.
27
DAVID MACAULAY
28
DAVID MACAULAY
Macaulay worked on The Way We Work for six
years. Because he’s not a scientist, he asked a science
writer named Richard Walker to write the text. That way,
he could concentrate on telling his story with pictures.
Once again, readers of all ages loved the book.
WHERE DOES HE GET HIS IDEAS? Macaulay’s ideas
come from his lifelong fascination with the way things
work. And even though his books are usually considered for children, his fans range in age from eight to 80.
“I’ve never thought about the ages of my readers,” he
says. “I always think about how I would understand it.”
DAVID MACAULAY’S HOME AND FAMILY: Macaulay
has been married three times. His first wife’s name is
Janice Elizabeth Michel. They have one daughter, Elizabeth. After they divorced, Macaulay married again. That
marriage also ended in divorce. He met his third wife,
Ruthie Murray, when he was teaching at RISD. They live
in Norwich, Vermont, with their two children.
Macaulay creates his books in a studio on the second floor of the house. “It’s a nice big space with oak
floors and high ceilings,” he says. “One of the best
things about the space is the big blank wall at one end.
When I’m working on a book, I’m constantly putting
sketches on the wall so I can compare them easily with
each other.”
29
DAVID MACAULAY
QUOTE
“I consider myself first and foremost an
illustrator, someone who makes things
clear through pictures and teaches
through pictures.”
SOME OF DAVID MACAULAY’S WORKS:
Cathedral
City
Pyramid
Underground
Castle
Motel of the Mysteries
Mill
Electricity
Why the Chicken Crossed the Road
The Way Things Work
Black and White
Ship
Building Big
Mosque
The Way We Work
30
DAVID MACAULAY
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT DAVID MACAULAY:
Write: David Macaulay
c/o Houghton Mifflin Children’s Books, 8th Floor
222 Berkeley Street
Boston, MA 02116-3764
WORLD WIDE WEB SITES:
http://www.davidmacaulay.com
http://houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/waywework/
author.html
31