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THE COMMERCE (GA) NEWS, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2007 -- PAGE 7B Laughs Lines Who saw the Brontosaurus enter the restaurant? The diners saw! ■ "0EST BIDDLE BOOK even- What did one dinosaur fossil say to the other? 7 haven 't seen you in ages! 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 copyfisM 2C07 choose Tnbun* Ditmbmod by Mecmohy.ib&jrn A chat with author/illustrator James Gurney DELAWARE IDAHO ILLINOIS INDIANA NEW MEXICO NORTH CAROLINA '0 *oqejp| 'Q r £!OLii|[| 'euEipu] ■£ 'euipje^f qqjojq Z '1 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 s 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 the book, I would go to my local public library and come home with a stack of lrooks about 2 feet high to try to pick Up new information to weave inlu the book. I wanted to show what each of the 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 ail a one way street. TFK: What kinds of hooks did you like to read as a kid? GURNEY: 1 liked “Treasure Island,” and 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 Rossrvsd time for kios and TimtfeirkidJ OOtTi flr* rO^KirO d If*0*11*14 0l Ttm* e MARTY WESTMAN/MCT GEOGRAPHY QUIZ Hew sharp are yotr geography skills 1 ? 5ee if you can identify the following state shapes. 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 cady 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 James Gurney takes readers with thcm thcir CultUTC!i to a lost island where humans and their architecture and anddinosaurslive together, their costa mes I didn’t win! James Gurney’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 Chanda ra,” recently hit honk stores. Time For Kids talked to Gurney about 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 woifc 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 paintings of worlds from my imagination, so I started off by doing a series of stand-alone paintings. ... It occurred to me in the 1990s that T 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 gitw out of the science of dinosaurs that was changing all around me in the ’80s and ’90s. By Anna Maltby / timefokkids.cum DEAR AMERICAN GIRL: /love 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 rny 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 fun 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: I was in a track program with my friend last year. / beat her in a vary race. This year she is beating me in every race. I know I should congratulate her, but I can *t! 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- , « ymS “au Ta American Girl 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 americangirL.com to get or give advice. <S 2007 Airi*no#n Girt. LLC All fiflhr* rtj*rv44 Help’ 1 Puzzle Play School’s been open for a while — friend ships are formed and sports and activities arc in full swing. Bur 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-Yankc, 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 gills “somet imes spread rumors around.” She has learned that if that hap pens , you can be Sjfy the one to “tell them to stop it.” SYDNEY FISCHEftfSAM JO it MERCURY NEWS 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 lening 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/scissors). 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. 7. 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 CoUison, Daroii Free Press