Newspaper Page Text
Page 10A
The Braselton News
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Laugh: Lines
Who saw the
Brontosaurus enter
the restaurant?
The diners saw?
Wacky Facts
I The first widely released fully animated cartoon
was “Gertie the Dinosaur” made by Windsor
McCay in 1914.
Stegosaurs had been extinct for SO million years
he fore the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Apatosaurus
appeared 1 - World AImana c for Kids
Ditmbutod by MeCIbiohy.'Ri&jn*
A chat with author/illustrator James Gurney
TFK: What is the hardest part of putting logelher the
“Dinotopia” books?
GURNEY: At every stage, 1 tiy to put as much effort as I can.
Doing the actual paintings takes the longest, and in some ways
if s the biggest challenge, because it involves a lot of research
and a lot of time doing the paint
ings . In some ways the writing,
which comes last in the process, is
the easiest. At every stage, I try to
do a lot of research. ... It’s hard hut
it’s also fun because it’s a chance to
leam about new things. In the new
hook, them’s a cutaway of a wind
mill that shows how windmills
work on the inside. Every time I
was working on a new sequence in
lire book, I would go to my local
public library and come home with
a stack of liooks about 2 feet high
to try to pick Up new information to
weave inlu the book. I wanted to
show what each of lire villages
looks like on the inside, with a cut
away view, to show whore you
sleep, where the food is kept. etc.
TFK: How are the dinosaurs
and humans in “Dinotopia” able to
work together so well?
GURNEY: The humans help the
dinosaurs in some ways, and the
dinosaurs help the humans in other
ways. I wanted to have some
dinosaurs acting like modem farm
animals — there's a dinosaur
pulling a plow in the village where
the windmill is. But I also wanted
to have some people who help
dinosaurs in other ways, like musi
cians who play music for them. Or
there’s one scene toward the end
of the hook that has people
bathing dinosaurs, kind of washing
them down, to make it a reciprocal
relationship, so it’s not all a one
way street.
TFK: What kinds of books did
you like to read as a kid?
GURNEY: 1 liked “Treasure
Islandand Mark Twain’s ‘Tom Sawyer” and "Huckleberry
Finn.” To be honest, I wasn’t a huge reader as a kid. I was
much more of an amateur archaeologist, much to my mother’s
dismay, because I would go in the backyard and even thuugh
we lived in suburbia, 1 was convinced there was a
lost city in my backyard. So I was always digging
and looking for things. After a while the kids in
my neighborhood weren’t allowed to play
with me because they’d always come home
with their pockets full of dirt. I spent a lot
of tune building models and miniatures.
TFK: Do you have any advice for kids
who want to become authors or illustrators?
GURNEY: I think if someone is
interested in creating a world of their
own, I really recommend starting by
drawing a map and putting some
rivers in it and some mountains
and some cities. For some reason
that has a way of gening you into a
world and getting you imagining where
the places might be and what sort of
adventures might happen,
o 2007 Tun* in*. All ftigtos Rossrv»d time for kios and
TimatorKi* oom *r* rO-5 Sl<Jr<id U*d*tn#fld Si Tim* IrtC ,
MARTY WESTMAN/MCT
James Gumey’s "Dinotopia” books take readers to a lost
island where humans and dinosaurs live together. Cool idea,
huh? Gurney’s detailed illustrations make the imaginary world
come alive. The fourth book in the series> “Dinotopia:
Journey to Chandara ” recently hit honk stores.
Time For Kids talked to
Gurney aboul his inspiration,
his favorite childhood books
and how to create an imaginary
world of your own.
TFK: Can you tell me about
how the “Dinotopia” books got
started? Where did the idea come
from, and where did you start?
GURNEY: I started as an
illustrator for fantasy and sci
ence-fiction paperback books,
and did lots of paintings of cas
tles and dragons and spaceships
and aliens. At the same time, I
was doing illustration work for
National Geographic magazine.
My job for them was to create
realistic pictures of ancient
cities that no longer exist. They
would send me to the locations
of these archaeological sites to
meet with the archaeologists.
Those folks have the best imagi
nations in the world. ... It
occurred to me that I could do
paint ings of worlds from my
imagination, so l started off by
doing a series of stand-alone
paint mgs It occurred to me
in the 1990s that I could weave
all these pictures together by
drawing a map and coming up
with the name for an island. I
came up with the name
“Dinotopia” as a shortened ver
sion of “dinosaur utopia.” The
concept of the dinosaurs really
grew out of the science of
dinosaurs that was changing all
around me in the ’80s and ’90s.
TFK: What made you decide
to write a new “Dinotopia”
book?
GURNEY: I wanted to return to the original journal of Arthur
Denison who is the Victorian explorer who was shipwrecked on
the island of Dinotopia, according to the journals that we find in
the first book. I wanted to continue to explore the island through
his eyes, since he’s someone from the mid- 19th century. His
way of making pictures and his way of writing is very much in
tunc with the caiiy explorers of our world when there were still
large areas of the glohe that were unexplored. That whole peri
od fascinates me. if we’re
to imagine that there’s an
island like Dinotopia, it’s
most fun to imagine it dur
ing that era, when explor
ers might come back with
accounts of a land that no
one has ever heard of, in
this case an island where
dinosaurs survived to the
present day, and where
people have been ship
wrecked on the island over
the centuries, bringing
with them their cultures
and their architecture and
their costumes.
By Anna Maltby / timefokkids.cum
James Gurney takes readers
to a lost island where humans
and dinosaurs live together.
I didn’t win!
DEAR AMERICAN GIRL: Ilove cheerleading. I want
ed to be captain more than anything. When the day
came to choose the captain, } had the biggest smile on
my face. But 1 wasn't chosen’ I still had the smile, but I
could hear my heart break. — Sadder Every Second
■ Not being chosen as captain must
hurt, but it doesn’t mean you can't
he an awesome cheerleader. Think
about all the reasons why you love
to cheer in the first place — long
before you ever dreamed of becom
ing captain. Now try to focus on the
Itm while keeping a great attitude
and team spirit. In time, your heart
will mend and you’ll prove to every
body that you’ve got what it takes to be a lop
cheerleader — officially or not.
DEAR AMERICAN GIRL: 7 was in a track
program with my friend last year. / beat her in
every race. This year she is beating me in every
race. I know I should congratulate her, but I can *tl
Instead I get mad. — Bad Sport
■ When you run a race, try not to measure yourself
against your friend. Instead, set your own goals —
try to beat your last finishing time. Give yourself
lots of encour
agement. Tell
yourself, “All
right? I’m two-tenths of a second faster than last
week!” If you get mad, cool off in private. Then
congratulate your friend the way you’d want to be
congratulated.
Virir americangiri.com to get or give advice■
<S 2007 AfTi*no#n Girt. LLC All riflhr* r***rv*4
American Girl
GEOGRAPHY QUIZ
Hew sharp are your geography skills'? 5ee if
you can identify the following state shapes.
[ ©
/ V.
0
i
]•
Maps are not to scale
DELAWARE
IDAHO
ILLINOIS
INDIANA
NEW MEXICO
NORTH CAROLINA
'0 *oqep| 'Q 's!oui||| '-p
'eueipu] ■£ 'euipjE^ qqjojq g 'ooixs^ ^3|q ■[.
Help!
Puzzle Play
School’s been open for a while — friend
ships are formed and sports and activities
are in full swing.
Bor some kids can feel left out, or con
frontations between kids can get scary.
“Now can be when things start
boiling over, but instead of let
ting it simmer, it’s time to con
front the problem,” says Kimbcr
Bishop-Yanke, founder Of Girls
Empowered.
Her organization’s goal
is to empower, which
means giving kids the
power to put meanness
and bullies out the door.
Bishop-Yanke recently
begun Kids Empowered to
include guys.
We visited an empow
erment session for girls
just before school started.
Don’t be a meanie!
Simone Butler, 7, who attends
Brookfield Academy in
Bloomfield Hills,
Mich., said she
learned that “if
somebody’s being
mean, don’t he
mean hack.”
Jordan McGee, 9,
of Berkley, Mich., says
she hates it when girls
“somet imes spread
rumors around.”
She has learned
that if that hap
pens , you can be
Xtfj the one to “tell
SYDNEY FISCHEftfSAM
J06E MERCURY NEWS
them to stop it.”
HANDLING CONFLICT
When conflict happens. Bishop-Yanke
shares these rules to deal with it. “Conflict is
normal. It is how we deal with it that mat
ters,” she says.
1. Share: Sharing can help both people
end up happy with the way things worked out.
2. Take turns: Sometimes a conflict can
he resolved by letting each person having
his or her own way for a while.
3. Chance it: When you have a dis
agreement over who goes first or whose idea
to go with, you may let chance decide (flip a
coin, roll the dice, play rock/paper/seissors).
Both must agree to accept the answer.
4. Compromise: Conflict is not solved by
tug-of-war; instead, if you lake both ends of
the rope and are willing to come together to
make a circle, both are winners. Stop pulling
in opposite directions and work together.
5. Apologize: This can help when some
one gets hurt from a conflict or disagree
ment. Say you are sorry if you are at fault. If
you feel you didn’t do anything wrong, it can
still help to say, “I’m sorry that we have got
ten into this argument.”
6. Postpone: When one or hoth of you
become angry or tired while resolving con
flict. put off dealing with the conflict until
another time when you have cooled down.
T. Humor: Sometimes we can look at our
prohlems with a little humor or laugh and
not take all of our problems so seriously.
8. Get help: When in distress with con
flict, seek help. This could happen when you
have tried many ways to settle the conflict
and have been unsuccessful. Go to a person
who can he counted on for a fair decision.
— By Cathy CoUisan. Detroii Tree Press