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 15-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “The Ivory-Billed”
Back in his room, Joseph collapses onto his cot and falls asleep. Celeste watches as the injured ivory-billed woodpecker limps about and pecks at any wood it can find. Celeste tries to encourage the wounded creature, but it doesn’t seem to understand her squeaks. The next day, Joseph takes the bird outside in the hope that being out in nature will revive its spirit, but it remains listless and refuses to eat. Later that evening, Audubon pins the woodpecker’s lifeless body to a wooden board. Joseph questions the painter’s practice of killing birds to paint their portraits, and Audubon angrily answers, “I am preserving their beauty forever. If I could paint their portraits as well another way, I would. Now go!” (146). Joseph obeys, but he wonders if there are any ivory-billed woodpeckers left.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Cornelius”
One afternoon, a farmhand’s sons bring Joseph a wood thrush with “soft, creamy white breast feathers spotted with dark brown” (152). Joseph thanks the boys, gives them a coin, and places the thrush in the birdcage in his room. The next morning, Celeste introduces herself to the bird, who is named Cornelius. Cornelius explains that he lives in the nearby woods, and he asks Celeste to help him escape. She offers to chew through the twigs that make up the bars of the cage.
The thrush asks Celeste how she came to live at Oakley Plantation, and she struggles to recall her childhood living with her parents and siblings in “a nest made of grasses in a tangle of timothy hay and wildflowers” (158). One day, while a young Celeste was out gathering grasses to weave, her home was destroyed and her family killed by a farmworker harvesting the hay with a sickle. A groundhog named Ellis rescued the young mouse and brought her to his home under the plantation. One day, she heard gunshots, and she never saw Ellis again after that. Later, Illianna and Trixie taught her how to find food in the house. Celeste is grateful to Cornelius for helping her reflect on her past. To show her appreciation, she offers to gather dogwood berries for him. Celeste gives the thrush hope, and he sings a song so beautiful that it makes her heart ache. Celeste asks her new friend to sing for Joseph.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Outside”
That evening, Celeste stops by her dusty old home under the floorboards to retrieve a basket and then follows one of Ellis’s tunnels out onto the plantation grounds. The mouse feels a combination of vulnerability and exhilaration as she takes in her surroundings. Thunder rumbles overhead, and she hurries towards the barn. A friendly hog directs her to the nearest dogwood tree and urges her to seek shelter from the approaching storm. Celeste loses her way in a patch of ivy and iris, and a brown toad helps her find her way again. Like the hog, the toad issues a warning to Celeste: “Better be fast, dearie! [...] Storm’s comin’! Feels like it’s going to be a big one!” (174).
Chapter 18 Summary: “The Storm”
Following the toad’s directions, Celeste reaches a dogwood tree. The storm arrives by the time she fills her basket with red and green berries. Raindrops fall “like spears” (179), battering the little mouse and streaming over the ground. The wind rips Celeste’s basket away and hurls her from the tree. She lands in a maelstrom of muddy water and fights her way to the surface. She climbs onto a piece of bark, which bears her like a raft. The deluge turns the road to the plantation into a creek, and the current carries her away from the house. Celeste is buffeted by rapids and “chilled to her core” on this rough voyage (182). Her raft comes to rest on a shoal, and the exhausted mouse falls asleep.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Aftermath”
The morning after the storm, Celeste awakens briefly before succumbing to her aches and weariness again. She sleeps into the evening.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Lafayette”
The next day, the sun’s warmth soothes Celeste’s aches. She awakens in a beautiful landscape full of towering sycamores, wildflowers, and butterflies. She rebuilds her strength by eating grass, seeds, and insects. An osprey startles Celeste by landing beside her. However, rather than attacking her, the bird introduces himself as Lafayette and explains that he’s come to check on the bedraggled mouse because she looks in need of help. Lafayette is familiar with the area because he spends most of his time flying along the river, and Celeste thinks that it must be wonderful to have wings. She asks him to meet her at sunup the next morning, saying, “I want you to help me get home” (196). The osprey is puzzled because it would be dangerous for the mouse to hold onto his back or his talons while he flies, but he agrees to wait until the next day to learn her “mysterious little plan” (198). Reminding her to be careful until their rendezvous, Lafayette flies away.
Chapter 21 Summary: “The Gondola”
After washing the dried mud from her fur, Celeste gathers grasses and strands of horse hair. Selecting the strongest materials, she uses her weaving skills to construct “a large gondola, big enough to hold a mouse, with a rope handle” (200). She thinks her mother would have been proud of her. Celeste works through the night, and she decorates the basket with coquina shells and a cardinal feather. She hides the gondola under a leaf and waits for Lafayette.
Chapters 15-21 Analysis
In the novel’s third section, Celeste makes new friends and relies on her resourcefulness to weather new perils. The author continues to use the motif of birds to explore The Relationship Between Art and Nature in these chapters. The ivory-billed woodpecker in Chapter 15 is an especially significant example of the motif because his death impresses on Celeste, Joseph, and the reader the dire and preventable loss that Audubon’s methods cause. The bird’s death is all the more melancholy because the ivory-billed woodpecker is thought to be extinct. The bird’s dismal end leads the kindhearted, pensive Joseph to summon his courage and question his employer’s methods: “‘But to kill them in order to make them look alive….’ Joseph shook his head” (146). Audubon dismisses the boy’s concerns at the time, but Joseph’s entreaties influence the artist’s eventual decision to try painting a live subject.
The woodpecker’s death adds to the suspense of Cornelius’s capture as the reader wonders if he will share the other bird’s fate. The thrush’s song in Chapter 16 foreshadows the scene in which he sings for Joseph at Celeste’s request. In addition, the curious wood thrush advances the themes of home and friendship by inviting Celeste to share her backstory. She has been searching for a home ever since the destruction of her first nest and, with it, her family and idyllic childhood: “She remembered three brothers and a sister, and a doting mother and father” (158). The deaths of her parents and siblings and Ellis’s disappearance help to explain why Celeste is wary of humans in general and frightened of gunfire in particular. The protagonist’s backstory reveals that she is at the plantation due to loss and inertia, but she ultimately finds a home that she actively chooses.
In Chapter 17, Cole uses suspense, symbolism, and foreshadowing to emphasize the importance of Celeste’s expedition to the dogwood tree. She undertakes this journey to gather berries for Cornelius, which becomes a symbol of friendship. She visits her old nook on her way to the plantation grounds, which allows the author to show how his protagonist’s perspective has changed during her Search for Home: “Her old home under the floorboards seemed even dustier and darker than she remembered” (168). After befriending Joseph and rediscovering the beauty of daylight, she is no longer content with the dreary confines of her old life. Indeed, she feels emboldened enough by her experiences to go outside by herself for the first time since Ellis found her alone and injured after her family’s deaths.
However, despite the protagonist’s growth, she is powerless against the thunderstorm in Chapter 18. As foreshadowed by the hog’s and the toad’s warnings, the storm is severe. Cole vividly captures the danger the protagonist is in by describing the wrathful elements: “Each as big as her ear, the drops fell from the black sky like spears. They pummeled her, nearly knocking her off the branch, nearly blinding her. Others struck her back and shoulders, drenching her fur” (179). To survive and make her way home to her friends again, the protagonist must draw upon her resourcefulness. For example, she uses a piece of bark as a raft to stay afloat in the creek. Chapter 20 introduces Lafayette, the jovial and altruistic osprey, who plays a key role in the plot and the theme of The Importance of Friendship. With his help, Celeste concocts a clever plan that relies upon her artistry. The gondola is the biggest basket she’s ever woven, and her pride in her work is evident in the way that she decorates it with shells and feathers and in her confidence that her mother would have approved. Celeste’s plan combines a skill that she had at the start of the novel with the confidence she’s gained through her experiences in the story thus far. As the novel continues, Celeste uses her ingenuity to make her way home and protect her friends.
