The Way He Works
Exploring David Macaulay's Process
Jennifer M. Brown, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 10/7/2008
Watch as David Macaulay shares and discusses the art in The Way We Work
David Macaulay credits his training as an architect with giving him the tools to tackle tough topics, and his lifelong enthusiasm for learning with preparing him to be a good teacher. He has taken readers inside cathedrals, pyramids, mosques, and mills, and explained how each served its community. Perhaps, up to now, the best example of Macaulay’s ability to unveil the inner workings of the things we take for granted has been his book, The Way Things Work (Houghton, 1988), which became the basis for a PBS documentary. "It would be very easy to get complacent about this process of gathering information, or of walking past something and thinking you'd really seen [it]," he states. In The Way We Work: Getting to Know the Amazing Human Body (Houghton, 2008), the author/illustrator opens with an explanation of how every human being begins as a single cell. Macaulay talks about his enthusiasm for his subjects, his research process, and why he will always be a student.
In your introduction to The Way We Work, you say that we take our bodies for granted. What do you mean by that?
I think that unless something goes wrong, we barely notice [our bodies]. It takes an interruption to the daily routine to force us to even think about what we are and how we're made, and how we work. Once that thing is fixed, you move on and don't think about it again until something else goes wrong. And [our bodies are] probably the most extraordinary thing we'll ever really encounter.
You have described the human body as a "vast community of individual cells" and compared cells to people, parts of a community of fellow humans. Was there a moment in your research when that idea clicked?
I think it happened fairly early on. I'm not sure it's an original thought. I didn't know anything about cells, never mind the human body, when I started this. So I started to read about cells, and began to realize that these things all began as single entities and quickly learned that if they work together their chances of survival improve. You work together or you die.
The Way We Work (Macaulay) © 2008
Is this why you begin your book with the cell?
by David Macaulay
Because I'm an architect by training, I want to know what the bricks are. I want to know what the body is made of. These weren't bricks, though, these were living things. I didn't understand what that really meant. But because each of us is a living thing, we're made of cells—and what are cells made of? For the first time in my life I found [chemistry] fascinating. I was constructing an atom to remember protons and neutrons. [I wanted to] avoid the old diagrams that were used to teach us, so in my drawing, a big hand drops the protons into the [cell's] center, just to give [the illustration] a bit of life.
Is it true that, to further your research, you became a visiting faculty member of a medical school?
Dana Anderson, at the University of Massachusetts at Worcester gave me that opportunity. If you're a member of the faculty, you can visit any O.R. [operating room]. When you jump into any subject and people realize that you want to do as good a job as you can, they take you seriously. That's part of the reason I'm not afraid to tackle any subject.
When you were working on Mosque (Houghton, 2003), you made models to draw from. Did you also make models of the human body?
I did a lot of work on the skeleton. I ran ribbons from one bone to another to follow where things went. One project was to put ribbons from shoulder to humerus to the ulna and radius, to try to get a sense of the layering of the musculature, and then label the ribbons.
Were there any parts of the body that surprised you?
There's that moment of revelation when you realize, this is so practical and clever. I'm thinking about the internal system of the digestive tract. For that system, the whole point is to create as much surface area as possible because that's where nutrients are absorbed. So what do you do? You have the lining inside this hose and fold [the hose] so you can squeeze a lot more surface inside. Then you put fingers on the folds, villi, and then cover the villi with cells that are covered with tiny, tiny fingers. In this way you multiply the internal surface area and, if you could take it out, it's [comparable in area to] something like half a tennis court. What a brilliant solution, and the cells did that! The cells figured that out.
Can you talk a bit about your choice to work with colored pencils, rather than pen-and-ink?
A few books back, I realized that I should put everything on tracing paper…going to "real" paper for the finished piece. And I thought, Why am I forcing myself to move to a completely different surface with different paper, [and] to a pen line or flat color or cross-hatching? I was having such a good time sketching, and here I am manufacturing a finished piece that has nothing to do with the drawing. The whole book was created on cheap tracing paper; it's wonderful to draw on.
Also, I wanted it to look like [the pictures] were being drawn by someone who was still learning about his subject, to reflect the process I went through in gathering information. There's a lightness, a looser feel to the drawings that I would not have had if I'd gone with the black outline that you see, for instance, in The Way Things Work.
The Way We Work (Macaulay) © 2008
That theme of discovery is also reflected through details like the small figures watching from the sidelines as broccoli is being swallowed, or the family overlooking the kidneys in the chapter on digestion.
by David Macaulay
I think people should have the same reaction to looking at the nephrons inside the kidney that you do when you're on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. With the Grand Canyon, it's time [that produces that sense of wonder], with the kidneys it's the complexity: How does this actually work? How do [the kidneys] filter out all of the bad stuff and hold onto everything your body could possibly use?
Did you struggle over how to present the information on the reproductive system- in particular, the section titled “Contact?”
Oh, God, yes. And whether to present it. I had flickering moments of doubt, but when you've gone to that kind of detail to show how the body works, you're not going to hold back the ultimate triumph—we've seen how cells divide and replicate, but how two cells come together to create one extraordinary fertilized egg…To write around it or try to avoid it seemed crazy to me. I hadn't avoided anything in the book, up to that point. Despite any potential pitfalls, I thought we've been straight and scientific all through the book and we have to finish the journey.
Let's be honest about it! It is miraculous in that out of that fertilized egg comes all the cells that will lead to the creation of another full-size body. It's a logical part of the journey. There's also a poetry to ending the book with new cells. I don't know how many drawings I made. It's direct and it's about sex, but it's hardly a how-to diagram; it's a natural flow of cells from one place to another and the journey they create, and that they must take.
You have described Dr. Dana K. Andersen, who tutored you through this book, as "an amazing teacher," and you yourself have said that the only other profession you'd consider is teaching. Why is a good teacher so important?
I am a teacher every day. It works because I'm a student every day. All good teachers are students. I am first and foremost a student. I get so excited and emotionally tied up with the things I'm learning that I want to pass them on. That by definition makes me a teacher.
Watch as David Macaulay shares and discusses the art in The Way We Work
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