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J.R.R. Tolkien once argued that the Fantasy World that he created (and others (like C.S. Lewis) was primarily meant for adults. How do you view Dinotopia? Is it for children or for adults, or both?

It's a good question. I have always resisted the narrow age categories in publishing. Those categories don't exist in computer animation, so why should they in books? The adventure books I like best, such as those by Mark Twain and Jules Verne were conceived before the age of market segmentation.

So when I write a story like Dinotopia, I try to write to please my own imagination, and include words and concepts that would not normally be included in a children's book. Kids get much of the difficult stuff, of course, as they always do. I know I've succeeded if bookstores have a hard time placing it. (Borders has always put Dinotopia books in the adult science fiction section.) Because of the pictures and the dinosaurs, it is usually thought of by others as a children's book, and I understand that.

I think a book should be like a swimming pool, with a shallow end and a deep end. Readers who can't "swim" yet appreciate being able to wade in the shallows, but they like the feeling of knowing that there are (hopefully) greater depths to explore.

James Gurney, if you were an art teacher, how would you organize a course? Think of this as two questions, for elementary, and high school.

I would have them write and illustrate stories. And I would teach them how to draw what they see. I did a high school workshop where students drew a street in their home town as a backdrop for a dinosaur, and then they drew the dinosaur into the scene.

Someone with a lot more ideas on this than me is Andy Wales of Pennsylvania, who has taught K-5 and is now teaching the upper grades. Check out his blog http://andrewwales.blogspot.com/. I've visited his school and he has gotten the students fired up both with creating comics, making maquettes, and drawing what they see.

Great answer! I appreciate the honesty. My sister has contemplated writing a childrens' book which she is hoping we can work on - together. I'm sure she'd be interested in your observations on pleasing YOURSELF!

Sincerest thanks for your book Color and Light. It is even more that what was loong in look for .

I love the simile of a book like a swimming pool.

In regard to having kids draw what they see...one of my most fun and fulfilling teaching experiences was a summer class I taught for several years at our local river. The kids (6th -8th grade) learned how to net macroinvertebrates; the nymph forms of dragonfly, damselfly, mayfly, etc. They then looked at the critters under binocular microscopes at 5x. These little animals look like alien space creatures. The kids carefully drew each body part, counting how many segments or elements in each appendage. On the third day of class, I gave the kids identification keys with drawings done by professional illustrators. They were thrilled as their closely observed, carefully drawn nymphs matched the key. An added thrill for the kids was they had no idea these life forms even existed, quietly clinging to undersides of river rocks. Withholding the key until the kids had spent a couple mornings drawing was an essential aspect of the class; they were drawing something they'd never seen before, strictly relying on observation rather than a predigested image.

James & Steve, thank you for the great answers! I'll check out that blog right away.

Steve, thanks for explaining that lesson. I wish more teachers taught the skill of drawing as a tool of scientific and historical inquiry. That's how it was taught in the schools in the 19th century. I think modern schools get overly caught up in thinking of art solely as an expressive aesthetic pursuit. It would be as if we taught writing solely for the purpose of poetry.

I used to have to do art on a cart! In one of my schools, it was an old grocery store cart!

Some of this news is discouraging. I consider a big part of my job the task of educating the public about the good things going on. It's not enough to teach art to kids. We have to be our own public relations and press agents.

Maybe we need to start our own booster clubs with sympathetic parents as well?

The school where I teach is extremely generous from both the administrative end and the parent teacher group, who recently financed a visit from James Gurney!

Andrew Wales is an amazing example of an art teacher who inspires not only the kids but the faculty and community as well. You can read about his work at his blog "Panel Discussion"
http://andrewwales.blogspot.com/

and the Lynch Bustin Art Room:
http://lbartroom.blogspot.com/

My sister is a primary school teacher and she gives a subject that I would translate like 'moral' or 'ethics'.
The subject sums up to "thinking about the things that happen in the world and about good and bad."
She often lets the children literally illustrate 'heavy' ethical subjects.
One time parents came to visit her because they were 'concerned'. Her dear daughter had told them that they make drawings in this class. Surely, for an ethics class, this was a misunderstanding !?

It seems true, the Arts are on the front lines of budget cuts in public schools all around the country.

Chesterfield County, the second largest public school system in Virginia offers a fantastic magnate high school for the arts. My daughter is a rising visual art freshman at the Thomas Dale Specialty Center for the Arts (http://www.specialtycenterarts.com/) Dale is one of two arts focused programs in our locality, the other being the Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts and Technology. They are incredible programs with a large percentage of graduates going on to the premier art colleges in the country, many with full ride scholarships.

Even though there have been budget cuts, our school board has, thus far, spared these programs from the axe. However, art classes in the lower grade level are sorely lacking. I've seen a marked decline in the quantity and quality of elementary classes from the 8 years between my daughter and son's education. Music rooms no longer exist. The music teachers and art teachers are floaters (your art on a cart in action). As a fellow artist and parent, I believe parental involvement is instrumental in maintaining the arts in our schools. If more parents would speak up for the arts, school boards might re-think paring them down.

Sadly, I fear that in our culture, there is more emphasis placed on education as a means to an end - that end being a lucrative career - leaving little room for creative endeavors. The Virginia SOL (standards of learning) is the basis for school accreditation in Chesterfield. The quantity of information students have to retain and spit out at the end of a period on set standardized tests leaves little room for learning anything outside the parameters of the SOL. Sadly, even creative teachers are being squelched and forced to teach "by the book." It's a great loss for our children.

What ever happened to the Renaissance approach to education? Only a century ago, creativity was encouraged and held in the highest esteem. People who weren't professional artists still kept sketchbooks and knew how to read and make music. What a difference 100 years makes.

i think art finds a way. and in some instances repressing a persons or childs ability to have art can build the desire to create. for me growing up i had the intense passion to create all the time, doodeling, sculpting in playdoh, i wasnt going to be stopped or suppressed.

it does really suck that schools are being forced to cut back on things like art and music.

but for some kids it only builds the desire to create and find different outlets for creativity. so in some ways these temporary lack of funds could be a good thing.

but i guess as long as they are ONLY TEMPORARY.....

I think art is seen upon as entertainment/recreation more than something useful and is therefore subject to cutbacks.

I remember going through all years of elementary school hungry for knowledge in art but no teacher could ever provide me with answers to the questions I had. I think, as Andrew Wales shows, that a dedicated art teacher who is an artist himself (comic book, working illustrator, fine artist..) can survive even bad times.

I think when the general public thinks of the arts today the first thoughts are of the "starving artist" ans the abstract works they come upon, especially in public areas nowadays. Who could blame the average person to question the need for art education when they see art that brings up the phrase "my kid could do better work than that."

I may be wrong, but it would seem to me, that art classes would be pretty cheap, all you need is your imagination, a pencil, and a piece of paper.

I'm lucky to work in a district with an arts friendly school board. My budget is a meager $200 per year but I do have a job and a wonderful classroom. I've been teaching for a long enough time that I have established some relationships in the community which sometimes pay off in the form of material donations.

I was a commercial sign painter for quite a few years before teaching and my classes have taken on sign painting and silkscreening jobs in the past to make money for our program. This would be very difficult if I didn't have a permanent base of operations (classroom) however.

Anyhow, I've only been teaching for thirteen years but even in that amount of time I've seen the money pendulum swing both ways. If art teachers can manage to keep a toehold I think things will eventually swing in a more favorable direction.

Craig, it's unbelievable that you work on $200 a year! I've always felt that if things got real bad financially, that I would rather have a job with no budget, than no job!

As Sir Francis says, it would be possible to do a ton of things with nothing more than #2 pencils and white paper. I don't really believe that would be best for kids, but it would be better than nothing.

However, I think there are many kids who are desperate for learning experiences that go beyond pencil and paper assessments. I think it's important for younger kids to have experiences in 3-D. Even if clay is not available, you can do a lot with salt dough and wheat paste. Not every household provides Play-dough for kids, or even makes them turn the tv off!

I agree with Craig that I predict that things will get better. In the meantime, there are things we can do. Our school recently raffled off our giant Sponge-Bob sculpture! This, along with baskets of goodies provided by teachers and classrooms raised more than $4000! Our parent-teacher group is a partnership, and doing these kinds of things help pay for a lot of the things that are "cut" from the official budget. Even a letter to our local Wal-mart got us $50, which will be used for our Sketch-a-palooza contest prizes. If things do get bad, fund-raising might become a bigger part of the job!

And, GreySkies, yes, parents and commnunity members please do speak up! School board meetings, letters to the editor, etc.

I teach at what used to be considered a 'vocational school'. In the state of Ohio there are two similar routes in the same settings...but both (should if taught properly) focus on traditional art skills, computer use as a tool, and getting kids ready for college in a commercial art or art field. The school I work for has been very generous in meeting all of our needs. We have 24 Mac work stations complete with WACOM tablets and scanners, industry standards software ranging from Photoshop to Maya...a second room for drawing/painting/prep work, a photo room with equipment (although we use it more to control lighting for still-lifes)...lots of books...and I usually purchase enough art supplies to last all year as we focus a lot on the traditional foundational items. I recently visited a similar school out in 'farm country' on the outskirts of Columbus OH that just recently purchased a motion capture room that is supposed to be the latest and greatest technology.

Unfortunately across the nation it seems the traditional art classes like most are used to get shoved to the back of the line because the heads don't see the $$$$ value for the students...it IS there but perhaps schools need to do a better job of packaging and informing with regards to the art careers that are available. Not to mention the valuable non$$$$ aspects art and music provide in processing information and creative thinking skills that are so important across a variety of fields.

I just returned from visiting family in San Antonio and was shocked to find that my nephew's school doesn't have an art teacher and that his class rarely gets any art instruction at all. (It's at the discretion / interest of the teacher. Of course, teaching to the standardized tests comes first.)

Sad times indeed.

This is somewhat like the situation that we've had in India for years and years. Art becomes available only to the leisured and the monied... children of parents who are not rich have been marked by society to carry out its highly-paid, but monotonous chores... working computers, managing sales... The sad thing here is that very often the parents themselves ask school to turn the Art period into an extra Physics session, or Maths coaching.

I was asked to draw a picture of an Ostrich for a billboard once. The person who asked me to draw it later saw me looking at a picture of an Ostrich from the dictionary as reference. The response that I received from him was that I was cheating. And that I was just copying the picture. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had this experience. Thank you for this blog as it has helped to reinforce for me the importance of reference material whether it is a picture a still-life or going outside to capture a location on canvas. I have also had to help another artist I work with to understand that it is not just alright to use reference but essential if you would like to be accurate.

My students will be tickled to death when they find out they're on here!

If it's cheating then kindly ask the person who wanted you to do the billboard to draw and paint the Ostrich, most likely they will not be able to do it. Which is why they hired an artist in the first place.

Jon, I'll go another step further: projection.

While most of my artwork throughout my life has been freehand life drawing, and sometimes photo reference, when under deadline I recently tried using a projector to help me with the bone structure on a portrait.

So I sketched in the basic contours in about 10 minutes. I then spent the next two hours refining the face.

It's a point of pride to be able to draw from my imagination primarily, and to keep improving my life drawing skills. I'm still uncomfortable at the thought of a projector, I suffer from that feeling of cheating, but a lot more work went into that portrait after the projection than during.

what a bunch of fortunate kids!

Andrew, you're definitely an awesome teacher.

Weirdly enough, Cyclops taped to that dinosaur reminds me of the old toy line "Dino-Riders." Predates Dinotopia by a good decade, I believe, though admittedly it was weird. Still, having a toy of a T-rex with lumberjack saws strapped to his ankles and lasers on his head is awesome.

This is wonderful. I would have killed to have a teacher like that in my youth. Perhaps these young students will be the next great fantasy illustrators. I can certainly point to "ah-hah!" moments in my younger years that helped inspire my artistic career.

I was just discussing with my students different ways of using reference for inspiration, so this is a very timely post. As long as the model or reference studies are either helping to achieve a goal based on the inspiration of the artist or filling in areas or "holes" in the artist's knowledge about a particular subject, I don't see a problem. I think reference is as much a part of good art as imagination. It's just how you use it!

Wow this is great! I'm an art teacher too and I love this idea, I've done similar things with action figures but I definitely haven't been using them to their full potential as reference objects. If you're interested please check out my kids blog and you'll see what we've been up to at the Boys & Girls Club in Long Beach California.

www.theyoungavengerscomicbookclub.blogspot.com

Oh to be a kid again and a student in this exciting class!

I loved The Penderwicks. I actually listened to it on a Playaway. Some books are done so well in the audio format you're glad you listened to it rather than read it. For some books this isn't the case and the audio version just doesn't come across well- you wished you had read it yourself. The Penderwicks was a very well done audio book. I can't wait to read the second title.

K. Darata, librarian

I really enjoyed both The Penderwicks and the sequel. I question, though, how popular the book will be with students. Maybe it's just because the students that I tend to see are middle and high school students who have been hardened by circumstances, but I think that this book will appeal more to teachers and parents than to kids. I could be wrong, though. I've learned that the only thing I can be sure of with students is that they will surprise me :)

S. Loch, librarian