Macaulay, David (1946-…), is an English-born American illustrator and author of children’s books. Macaulay has won acclaim for his ability to explain complex architectural and technical subjects to young readers. Critics have praised his skill at using his pictures and text to show children how things are built and how they work. Macaulay won the 1991 Caldecott Medal for Black and White (1990). The medal is awarded annually to the best picture book by an American. Black and White contains four overlapping tales about parents, cows, and train trips that may be read as individual stories, or as one story.
Macaulay won immediate recognition with his first book, Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction (1973, revised as Building the Book Cathedral, 1999). Using detailed pen-and-ink drawings, Macaulay describes how a great Gothic cathedral was built, from the first plans to the completed building. The book also explores the social and historical influences that contributed to the construction of the cathedral. Macaulay continued his examination of building and architecture with such books as City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction (1974), Pyramid (1975), Castle (1977), Mill (1983), Ship (1993), and Mosque (2003). He illustrated and co-wrote with Richard Walker The Way We Work (2008), a description of how the human body works. Macaulay’s creative use of illustrations includes close-ups, cutaways, and double-page spreads.
Macaulay’s Underground (1976) looks at the activity that goes on beneath a city street. Motel of the Mysteries (1979) is a satire that imagines how the society of the 1900’s might look to people who uncover it 2,000 years later. In Unbuilding (1980), an individual buys the Empire State Building skyscraper in New York City and decides to take it apart. The Way Things Work (1988) explains how everyday items work. It was revised and updated as The New Ways Things Work (with Neil Ardley, 1998). Shortcut (1995), like Black and White, tells multiple stories, this time about six people who meet again and again. Angelo (2002) is the story of an elderly architectural plasterer who discovers an injured pigeon in a church he is restoring and nurses the bird back to health. How Machines Work: Zoo Break! (2015) stages a lesson about simple machines at a zoo, where a sloth and shrew are attempting to escape.
David Alexander Macaulay was born on Dec. 2, 1946, in Burton-on-Trent, England. In his book Crossing on Time: Steam Engines, Fast Ships, and a Journey to the New World (2019), he combines a description of steamship construction with the story of his family’s voyage on a steamship in 1957, when his father took a job in the United States. Macaulay received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1969. He was a member of the school’s faculty from 1969 to 1990.
