Lauren Stringer
Castles, Caves, and Honeycombs
written by Linda Ashman
published by Harcourt, 2001
ISBN 0-1520-2211-2
Many places can make a home--a silent cave, a secret den, a silky web, even a sticky honeycomb. Each one is safe and snug and just right for the families who live there. Linda Ashman’s spare, lyrical text and Lauren Stringer’s sumptuous paintings invite you to explore some of these wonderful homes and see how different--yet alike--they can be.
Awards
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•A Selection of the Children’s Book-
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of-the-Month Club
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•A Selection of Nest Literary Classics
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•A Selection of the Junior Library Guild
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•SCBWI Golden Kite Honor Award for Illustration
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•Booklist Editor’s Choice
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•Between the Lions, PBS
Reviews
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★With glorious acrylic paintings, Stringer...works her heady visual magic...”There’s no place like home” has been said many times and in many ways, but rarely so convincingly.
--Publisher’s Weekly
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★Every aspect of the art is curved: the lines themselves, the overall shapes of the pictures, and the path the eye follows in looking at each of the illustrations... The result is a warm, comforting vision of home, extending from the animals in the natural world to the children sleeping in their beds on the last page. Beautifully crafted and satisfying.
--Booklist
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★...Because the names of the animals are not mentioned, children can try to identify the creatures that live in each place, adding an element of participation to the story. Done in swirling acrylics, the bright and cheerful art provides visual clues to the text and reinforces the message about homes being “safe and snug.” This title can be enjoyed as poetry or paired with Mary Ann Hoberman’s A House Is A House for Me,(Puffin, 1982) as part of a unit on dwellings.
--School Library Journal
A Little Bit About...
How I Came to Illustrate Castles, Caves, and Honeycombs:
When I read the manuscript for Castles, Caves, and Honeycombs, it was the subject of “homes” that caught my attention. My family moved a lot as I was growing up, so I learned from a young age how to turn an empty, foreign house into a warm and familiar home. Now that I am grown up and have two children of my own, my husband and I spend a lot of time creating a good home for all of us. While I researched the homes of all of the different animals in the book, I also spent a lot of time watching my children at play in and out of our house. By painting the activities of my children throughout this book it became a wonderful way of connecting home life with the home lives of animals in the world around us.
This was one of my favorite books to paint. The rhythms and rhyme of the text kept a rhythm going in my studio the entire time I worked on Castles, Caves, and Honeycombs. The world of animals and their homes is a world of shape and color that never ends. I love to work with shape and color in my artwork, so painting this book was exhilarating!
A day in my studio while working on Castles, Caves, and Honeycombs...
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