1. LAROCHE, Giles 1956-
PERSONAL: Born July 1, 1956, in Berlin, NH; son of Romeo and Claire Laroche. Nationality: American
Education: Montserrat College of Art, degree, 1981. Hobbies and other interests: Travel, hiking.
ADDRESSES: Home--Salem, MA. Email--giles@gileslaroche.com.
CAREER: Artist and illustrator of children's books. Artist in residence at numerous schools, beginning c.
1990. Exhibitions: Paintings, drawings, and illustrations exhibited nationally, including by Society of
Illustrators, New York, NY.
AWARDS, HONORS: Notable Book for a Global Society Honor Book designation, International Reading
Association, 2001, for Sacred Places by Philemon Sturges.
WRITINGS:
SELF-ILLUSTRATED
What's Inside? Fascinating Structures around the World, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2009.
If You Lived Here: Houses of the World, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children (Boston, MA), 2011.
ILLUSTRATOR
Lois Lenski, Sing a Song of People, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1987.
Rachel Field, General Store, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1988.
Rachel Field, A Road Might Lead to Anywhere, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1990.
Dayle Ann Dodds, The Color Box, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1992.
Lee Bennett Hopkins, editor, Ragged Shadows:Poems of Halloween Night, Little, Brown (Boston, MA),
1993.
Philemon Sturges, Bridges Are to Cross, Putnam's (New York, NY), 1998.
Philemon Sturges, Sacred Places, Putnam's (New York, NY), 2000.
Ann Fearrington, Who Sees the Lighthouse?, Putnam's (New York, NY), 2002.
Philemon Sturges, Down to the Sea in Ships, Putnam's (New York, NY), 2005.
April Jones Prince, What Do Wheels Do All Day?, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2006.
David L. Harrison, Now You See Them, Now You Don't: Creatures That Know How to Hide, Charlesbridge
(Watertown, MA), 2016.
SIDELIGHTS:
Described by their creator as “paper relief,” Giles Laroche's intricate cut-paper-collage illustrations are a
feature of his original picture books What's Inside? Fascinating Structures around the World and If You
Lived Here: Houses of the World, as well as of picture books featuring texts by authors such as Lois Lenski,
Dayle Ann Dodds, Philemon Sturges, and Rachel Field. Reviewing April Jones Prince's What Do Wheels Do
All Day?, a story geared for young boys, Horn Book critic Lolly Robinson cited Laroche's “impressive bas-
relief cut-paper collages” as among the book's strengths, while Ann Fearrington's Who Sees the Lighthouse?
was lauded by Booklist critic Ilene Cooper as a “celebration of lighthouses” that is also “a wonder of paper
craft.”
Laroche was inspired to begin book illustration while working as an assistant at an architectural firm in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he began developing his unique cut-paper technique in his art studios in
Salem, Massachusetts, and Washington, New Hampshire during the 1980s. His paper-relief technique
involves cutting, painting, and gluing up to seven or eight layers of paper within each image, spacing each
layer to create shadows that give his work a dimensional quality. “I had always enjoyed the collage process,”

2. Laroche once told SATA, “and I began creating collages depicting scenes of medieval towns and colonial
villages. In time my collages became more dimensional, and I found myself hand-coloring my own cut-out
collage elements. Then I remembered children's books, and I thought that perhaps my paper reliefs would
lend themselves well as book illustrations if they could be lit and photographed in an interesting and dramatic
way.” Reviewers of Laroche's published illustrations have suggested that the artist's cut-paper collages do
indeed work well as illustrations for children's books, especially when a three-dimensional effect is desired.
Allowing children an up-close view of over a dozen of the world's most amazing feats of construction
engineering, What's Inside? features layered cut-paper images that reproduce buildings both inside and out.
As well as depicting structures from the underground tomb of Egypt's King Tutankamun to Sydney,
Australia's Opera House and the Georgia Aquarium, Laroche includes specific facts about each structure,
such as location, date of completion, materials, and special features. Calling What's Inside? a “beautiful
book,” Paula Willey added in School Library Journal that its sculpturalimages “are depicted with skill and
charm” and feature an “intricacy [that] ... will hold readers spellbound.” Featuring a “trademark” style that
mixes “drawing, painting, and cut paper,” the artwork in What's Inside? is enhanced by “minute detail [that]
celebrates the awe-inspiring constructions,” according to Booklist contributor Hazel Rochman.
Laroche turns his attention homeward in If You Lived Here, which allows readers to experience life inside
homes from around the world. In each of the book's sixteen double-page spreads--which span time and place
and range from a village pueblo to an eighteenth-century pioneer log home to a rammed-earth “tulou” from
Fuji--an intricate collage image reveals “the geography, the inhabitants, and the community, as well as the
house itself,” according to Booklist critic Thom Barthelmess. In Horn Book Jonathan Hunt commended the
work, writing that Laroche's fact-filled tour of dwellings allow young readers “glimpses into the lives of
people who might live very differently” and “also expand and broaden their worldview,” while School
Library Journal contributor Kathleen Kelly MacMillan recommended If You Lived Here as an “exemplary”
work that will “inspire readers as well as educate them.”
Laroche' knowledge of architecture is also on display in his illustrations for Lee Bennett Hopkins' Ragged
Shadows:Poems of Halloween Night, an anthology of fourteen poems featuring costumed children making
the rounds trick-or-treating through the streets of Salem, Massachusetts. Laroche's cut-paper collages again
capture architectural elements in the pages of Sturges's Bridges Are to Cross and Sacred Places. In the first,
Sturges showcases fifteen bridges, from the high-tech splendor of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to
a 2,000-year-old Spanish aqueduct, in the process covering a range of styles, technologies, and materials
across time and culture. A Publishers Weekly critic, reviewing Bridges Are to Cross, highlighted Laroche's
“astonishing 3-D collage illustration,” while School Library Journal reviewer Ronald Jobe remarked that
“each bridge ... has a luminescent quality to it, as if the light is radiating from within. What an effect!”
In Sacred Places Sturges offers a brief tour of nearly thirty places across five continents that are considered
sacred by some religion. In her review of the work for SchoolLibrary Journal, Patricia Lothrop-Green
remarked that Laroche's illustrations here offer more information than a photograph of the actualsites ever
could: his “rich and detailed art balances architectural impact with situation, use, and cultural context as a
photograph could never do,” according to the critic. Down to the Sea in Ships marked another collaboration
between Sturges and Laroche, and here author and illustrator team up to create what Booklist critic Gillian
Engberg described as a “beautifully illustrated” collection of verses honoring boats, from ancient Viking
drakars to tall-masted war ships to modern auto ferries. Laroche's “stunning collages” outshine Sturges's text,
according to Engberg, while in School Library Journal Teresa Pfeifer wrote of Down to the Sea in Ships that
“author and illustrator work wonders together” in crafting the innovative picture book.
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
PERIODICALS

3. Booklist, May 1, 1992, Kay Weisman, review of The Color Box, pp. 1606-1607; August, 1993, Kathryn
Broderick, review of Ragged Shadows: Poems of Halloween Night, p. 2067; October 1, 2000, Ilene Cooper,
review of Sacred Places, p. 360; November 15, 2002, Ilene Cooper, review of Who Sees the Lighthouse?, p.
609; May 15, 2005, Gillian Engberg, review of Down to the Sea in Ships, p. 1655; April 15, 2006, Carolyn
Phelan, review of What Do Wheels Do All Day?, p. 50; February 15, 2009, Hazel Rochman, review of
What's Inside? Fascinating Structures around the World, p. 78; October 15, 2011, Thom Barthelmess, review
of If You Lived Here: Houses of the World, p. 42.
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, May, 2009, Elizabeth Bush, review of What's Inside?, p. 368;
December, 2011, Elizabeth Bush, review of If You Lived Here, p. 212.
Horn Book, May-June, 2006, Lolly Robinson, review of What Do Wheels Do All Day?, p. 299; September-
October, 2011, Jonathan Hunt, review of If You Lived Here, p. 111.
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2002, review of Who Sees the Lighthouse?, p. 879; April 15, 2005, review of
Down to the Sea in Ships, p. 483; May 1, 2006, review of What Do Wheels Do All Day?, p. 465; September
15, 2011, review of If You Liked Here.
New York Times Book Review, May 17, 1992, Liz Rosenberg, review of The Color Box, p. 34.
Publishers Weekly, September 20, 1993, review of Ragged Shadows, p. 30; October 30, 2000, review of
Bridges Are to Cross, p. 78; June 17, 2002, review of Who Sees the Lighthouse?, p. 63.
SchoolLibrary Journal, June, 1992, Steven Engelfried, review of The Color Box, p. 92; December, 1998,
Ronald Jobe, review of Bridges Are to Cross, p. 116; December, 2000, Patricia Lothrop-Green, review of
Sacred Places, pp. 136-137; October, 2002, Laurie Von Mehren, review of Who Sees the Lighthouse?, p.
105; June, 2005, Teresa Pfeifer, review of Down to the Sea in Ships, p. 187; June, 2006, Janet S. Thompson,
review of What Do Wheels Do All Day?, p. 140; May, 2009, Paula Willey, review of What's Inside?, p. 125;
September, 2011, Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, review of If You Lived Here, p. 136.
ONLINE
Giles Laroche website, http://www.gileslaroche.com (February 15, 2015).*