49 pages • 1 hour read
Henry ColeA Nest for Celeste: A Story About Art, Inspiration, and the Meaning of Home
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Basket Maker”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gun violence and the deaths of animals.
Celeste the mouse lives under the floorboards of a Louisiana plantation. She skillfully weaves fragrant blades of dried grasses into baskets “with perfect knots and minuscule braids” (11). Her living space under the plantation’s dining room is dim and musty, and she only dares to search the house for food and materials at night, so she has all but “forgotten what a sunny day was like” (13). Recently, Celeste has begun to find feathers during her nocturnal expeditions. As she finishes up a new basket, she hears a rustling sound from the tunnel connected to her nook. Two gray rats push their way into her home. Celeste has grown accustomed to living in darkness, but she doesn’t enjoy sharing the space with the rats.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Illianna and Trixie”
The two rats are named Illianna and Trixie, and they often bully Celeste and steal food from her. Illianna scorns Celeste’s basket-weaving and asks, “Don’t you have anything better to do than this silly pastime?” (17). Trixie looks through the baskets where the mouse keeps her food. Finding only bread crusts, she bites Celeste and accuses her of hiding the good food, “the bacon scraps and the sausage bits and the biscuit pieces” (18). Trixie and Illianna demand that she go to the dining room at once even though there are humans there. The rats remind her to keep to the shadows and to watch out for the cat. Knowing that they’ll only treat her worse if she refuses, Celeste fearfully obeys the rats.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Mr. Audubon”
Celeste hides under the sideboard in the dining room and keeps an eye out for the cat, “a silent mass of gray fur” (23). As she waits for the humans to leave, the mouse listens to their conversation. The man of the house, Mr. Pirrie, welcomes Mr. Audubon and his assistant to Oakley Plantation. Mr. Audubon thanks Mr. and Mrs. Pirrie for their hospitality and promises to teach their daughter, Eliza, drawing, painting, and “the latest gavottes and cotillions from Paris” (25). Mr. Audubon has come to Louisiana to work towards his goal of painting every species of bird in North America. His young assistant, Joseph, is a melancholy boy from Cincinnati with a gift for painting plants. After the humans leave the dining room, Celeste prepares to search for crumbs.
Chapter 4 Summary: “A Sudden Departure”
Illianna and Trixie grow impatient with Celeste and tell her to act as a lookout while they take the first pick of the remnants from the humans’ meal. Following the enticing scents of pie crust and spoon bread, the rats creep towards the table. They don’t notice the cat resting on a chair until it pounces. Trixie escapes through the screen door and runs away. However, the cat seizes Illianna, who squeaks for help and then makes “a sound like wet fingers on a candle flame” (43). Celeste cries out, but the cat ignores her. Alone and afraid, she hides by the sideboard in the deserted dining room.
Chapter 5 Summary: “A Narrow Escape”
On the evening of Illianna’s death, the cat discovers the location of Celeste’s hiding place under the sideboard. The predator’s vigilance makes it difficult for the mouse to forage, and her food stores soon become depleted. One night, she gathers a lima bean and a feather that is “soft and white, dotted with gray spots” (50). Suddenly, she sees the cat’s yellow-green eyes between her and her mousehole. The cat pursues Celeste down the hallway. With a desperate leap, she scales a carved newel post. The cat retreats to the dining room and sits in front of the sideboard. Feeling “small and exposed” (55), Celeste thinks longingly of her home under the floorboards. Her predicament makes even the bullying of Illianna and Trixie seem inviting by comparison. She realizes that she must climb further up or face certain death.
Chapter 6 Summary: “A New Nest”
As Celeste continues to climb along the hallway, she is filled with a combination of vertigo and exhilaration. The large, richly furnished house seems like a palace to her. As morning breaks, Celeste enters a small room containing a desk covered with papers, an empty cage, and several paintings of plants and insects. The mouse finds an old leather boot under a cot. She chooses it as her hiding place because the cat won’t be able to reach her if she’s inside the toe. Celeste builds a nest inside the boot using dried leaves, bits of paper, and an old sock. Appraising her new home, she tells herself, “Well, I guess ‘cozy’ is a word for it” (66). Then the exhausted mouse curls up in her nest and falls asleep.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Rescue by Dash”
Celeste has no choice but to search the dining room for food the next night. She fills her basket with watermelon seeds, pecans, and bits of meat. The sideboard is unguarded, so she hurries to her old home and packs a large basket with feathers and weaving materials. Celeste is excited to leave the “crowded, dark, dusty, musty” little space under the floorboards for her new home in the boot (72). She returns to the dining room and gathers more crumbs. The cat enters the room and gives chase, but Celeste escapes when a brown dog “as big as a dining-room chair” scares the cat away (74). The commotion awakens the house’s human denizens. Mr. Audubon apologizes and explains that he and Joseph were out hunting with his dog, Dash. Mr. Audubon and Joseph go to their rooms. When Celeste returns to the old boot, she hears snoring from the cot above her.
Chapters 1-7 Analysis
In the novel’s first section, Celeste faces a perilous struggle to survive and finds a new home for herself. The protagonist is in a dark place both literally and figuratively when she first appears. Chapter 2 introduces two of the story’s antagonists, Trixie and Illianna. The mouse’s behavior around the rats emphasizes her gentleness and shows how this potentially positive trait is taken advantage of: “Celeste felt defenseless against the two marauders, who frequently bullied their way into her nook, ransacking and filching” (18). The meek and frightened mouse has no friends to support her, and she lacks the confidence to stand up for herself. At the beginning of the story, Celeste’s physical and psychological safety are both in peril, which adds urgency to the theme of The Search for Home.
Chapter 3 expands the novel’s cast of characters by introducing the house’s human residents. Mr. and Mrs. Pirrie own the plantation and have a daughter named Eliza. Celeste sees Mr. Audubon and his young assistant, Joseph, for the first time in this chapter. Audubon helps to situate the story in its historical context in the 1820s, and his presence is foreshadowed by the feathers that Celeste finds in Chapter 1. Additionally, Chapter 3 establishes Audubon’s ambitious goal of painting all of North America’s birds in their natural surroundings. As the novel continues, his work becomes central to the theme of The Relationship Between Art and Nature.
The novel’s plot and suspense accelerate with Illianna’s death in Chapter 4. Cole uses auditory imagery to heighten the tension as the rats venture out into the dining room: “Except for the ticking of the hallway clock, the only thing they heard was the galloping of their own heartbeats” (33). The author combines auditory imagery with a simile to depict the moment of Illianna’s death; her life is snuffed out like a candle. Celeste’s reaction to the rat’s death develops her caring, compassionate character. Despite how cruelly Illianna treated her, the mouse feels pity and horror for her.
The cat forces Celeste to undertake the search for a new home, which leads her to Joseph’s room. This search develops the protagonist’s admirable traits. For example, she shows courage and perseverance by exploring parts of the house she’s never seen before, and her admiration of the furnishings demonstrates her appreciation of beauty: “‘What a palace I’ve lived in!’ whispered Celeste. She spent a moment looking at the world from this new perspective” (58). Celeste’s positive traits also include industriousness and creativity, which Cole establishes through her basket weaving: “All of the baskets were skillfully made, with perfect knots and minuscule braids” (11). Celeste’s artistry with baskets becomes integral to the plot later in the novel.
As she searches for the ideal home, the various nests Celeste constructs over the course of the story serve as motifs of the theme. Although the makeshift nest she builds in Chapter 6 isn’t perfect, she prefers it to her nook under the floorboards, and it provides one of the essential qualities that Celeste looks for in a home, safety: “[S]he felt protected; should the cat ever roam the upstairs rooms, its claws couldn’t reach deep enough into the boot” (66). Cole hints that the boot belongs to Joseph because the small room contains pictures of plants and because the mouse hears snoring above her in Chapter 7. Joseph becomes a major character and makes significant contributions to the theme of The Importance of Friendship in the next section.
