cathedral the story of its construction by david macaulay

Eventually, we sent him to his room and his mom came and read him something else. He kept complaining about how boring this was and he wanted to read something else. He wants to be a robot engineer, but he didn’t care for a building engineer at all. The 5 year old nephew was bored to tears. This wasn’t so much a fact book, but she really got into this story and she was amazed by it. This is a fictional building that took about 100 years to build, but it’s based off Notre Dame which took 200 years to build in reality. Seeing how they did it makes me in awe of them and I can see how they did it now and I’m more amazing by their will to build this.

To me, making such great works with such simple tools always seemed like such a mystery. I always wondered how those buildings were built and this book lays it out and it’s incredible. It is longish, about 20 minutes to read, so I would say this is for older children. So, it’s not exciting storytelling, it’s interesting and amazing story telling. The book is long and its a story of putting together a cathedral from foundation to the spire. David does amazing pictures of the Cathedral and all its parts and how it would be put together. They are all black and white pencil drawings. Five of these titles have been made into popular PBS television programs. From the pyramids of Egypt to the skyscrapers of New York City, the human race’s great architectural and engineering accomplishments have been demystified through Macaulay's elaborate show-and-tells. Following in this tradition, Macaulay created other books-including City, Castle, Pyramid, Mill, Underground, Unbuilding, and Mosque-that have provided the explanations of the how and the why in a way that is both accessible and entertaining. He published his first book, Cathedral, in 1973. After working as an interior designer, a junior high school teacher, and a teacher at RISD, Macaulay began to experiment with creating books. After spending his fifth year at RISD in Rome on the European Honors Program, he received a bachelor’s degree in architecture and vowed never to practice. During this time he began to draw seriously, and after graduating from high school he enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He found himself having to adjust from an idyllic English childhood to life in a fast paced American city. David Macaulay, born in 1946, was eleven when his parents moved from England to Bloomfield, New Jersey.

Cathedral the story of its construction by david macaulay