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  • Published: 11 September 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241469941
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 80

The Cave Explorer




Explore the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux and the story of the boy and his dog who rediscovered them in this stunningly illlustrated fact-filled book for curious young readers.

Explore the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux and the story of the boy and his dog who rediscovered them in this stunningly illustrated fact-filled book for curious young readers.

Have you ever wondered what life was like for the human beings who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago? What stories did they tell one another? What stories would they want to tell us?

One day in 1940, a young boy named Marcel Ravidat was walking his dog, Robot, near his home in southwestern France. When Robot found a strange hole near an upturned tree, Marcel and his friends rushed in to explore and find some hidden treasure. But the treasure they found was like nothing they had ever expected – prehistoric paintings and carvings that covered the walls of an underground cave, and that told the story of the palaeolithic people that had once called this place home.

This rediscovered cave was an important historical find, and the artefacts and paintings inside helped archaeologists and anthropologists piece together what life must have been like for humans living hundreds of thousands of years ago. Little did Marcel know that the mystery of why these paintings were created and what stories the artists were depicting would continue to capture our imaginations as we still debate their meaning today.

Beautifully illustrated by emerging talent Kate Winter, with incredible panoramic fold-out pages, this is a book to treasure and to read again and again, perfect for all fans of natural history and curious young explorers.

'[An] exceptional picture book for readers of all ages [...] A treasure.' – The Times

  • Published: 11 September 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241469941
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 80

About the authors

Ruth Thomas

Ruth Thomas was born in Wellington, Somerset, in 1927. She received a BA Honours Degree in English and a Diploma in Education from Bristol University and went on to teach in a number of primary schools in the East End of London. Ruth began writing soon after she retired in 1985. Her first novel The Runaways won The Guardian Children's Fiction Award. This was followed by four further critically acclaimed novels including The Secret, which was televised by Thames Television. She died in 2011.

Kate Winter

Kate Winter currently lives in Cambridge, England. She studied a BA in Fine Art at the Slade in London and then an MA in Children's Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art. Her MA project about the discovery of prehistoric cave painting won the 2019 Ronald Searle Award for Creativity, came runner up in the 2019 Batsford Prize and was highly commended in the 2020 V&A Student Illustration Awards. Kate’s debut book, an illustrated biography of Mary Anning called The Fossil Hunter won the 2024 Klaus Flugge Prize. Kate loves history and real-life stories and wants to bring them to life for children, giving them access to explore the past through imagery and mysterious tales.

Jean Ure

JEAN URE had her first novel, Dance for Two, published while she was still at school and has been writing ever since. She studied at drama school, where she met her husband, and is now a full-time author of books for both young readers and adults with more than fifty titles to her name including Plague 99, which won the l990 Lancashire Book Award, and a series of novels for the Corgi Freeway list, including A Place to Scream. She has also established herself as a perceptive and witty writer for much younger readers with such titles as Help! It's Harriet! (Collins), Captain Cranko (Walker) and Spooky Cottage (Heinemann).