Breakout Dinosaurs

It’s an honour to be nominated for the Red Cedar Award but to have TWO books nominated is completely thrilling! They’re two very different books but I hope that many of you will have the chance to read them both.

Being able to create books about history is a dream job for me since I’ve always been enthralled by history. When I was growing up I haunted the children’s section of our town library—reading sometimes four or five books a week.

The first book that I actually wrote was Anastasia’s Album: The Last Tsar’s Youngest Daughter Tells Her Own Story, published in 1996. I had been lucky enough to go to Moscow in 1994 to see the last Tsar’s palaces and when I saw the letters and hand-colored photographs of Anastasia, I knew I had to tell her story.

Hugh has 2 books nominated for Red Cedar Award this year.

Breakout Dinosaurs is all about Canada’s coolest, scariest dinosaurs. There are lots of books about dinosaurs but only a few about Canadian dinosaurs. I wanted to show Canadian kids just how many of these amazing creatures once lived right here in our own country. Maybe some of them lived where you live!

I live in Toronto and have visited the Royal Ontario Museum ever since I was a child. They have an excellent collection of dinosaurs bones, most of which have been found in Canada. (Many of them are from western Canada since that is the best place of all to find dinosaur fossils.) I thought it would be great to show some of these in a book. I also wanted to work with the museum’s curators and paleontologists since they know a lot more about dinosaurs than I do. They made sure that all the information in the book is accurate and up to date with the latest scientific studies.

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose tells the true story behind a very beautiful and very famous painting by John Singer Sargent. It depicts two girls in white smocks lighting paper lanterns in a garden at twilight. When I first saw this painting in an art museum in London, England, I wondered, “are those girls real? I wonder what happened to them.”

So I decided to find out all I could about this painting. The first thing I learned was that the picture was painted in a garden in a village called Broadway in England. The two girls were named Polly and Dolly Barnard. The garden belonged to an American painter named Frank Millet, who died on the Titanic. Since I’d written several books about the Titanic, this seemed an amazing coincidence.

Then I went to a museum in Washington, DC and found all of the personal letters and diaries from Frank Millet and his family. With these letters I was able to recreate the whole story of the painting called Carnation,Lily,Lily Rose and how it received its unusual name. The book is illustrated with beautiful paintings and sketches by John Singer Sargent so you can imagine just what it was like to be in this beautiful place during such a magical time.

I’ve now written a play called Carnation,Lily,Lily,Rose. If your school would like to perform this play, just let me know!

Other Books by Hugh Brewster:
Anastasia’s Album: Toronto, Penguin (1996)
Inside the Titanic: Toronto, Scholastic (1997)
882 1/2 Amazing Answers To Your Questions About the Titanic; Toronto, Scholastic (1998)
To Be a Princess: The Fascinating Lives of Real Princesses; Toronto, Scholastic (2000)
Dieppe: Canada’s Darkest Day of World War II; Toronto, Scholastic (2009)

Contact Hugh Brewster at:
Website:www.hughbrewster.com

About the Illustrator:
Alan writes:

When I was a very young boy, my parents took me to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. Of all the amazing things contained within that museum it was the huge murals of prehistoric mammals by Jay Matternes that captivated me. I resolved that I wanted to paint pictures like those, but of North American dinosaurs instead of the giant mammals. Over the years I was lucky to meet two artists, Robert Bateman and Steve Pilcher, who answered my questions about art and provided encouragement.

Robert Bateman was a local high school teacher who was just beginning his career as a painter of wildlife and Steve Pilcher was a book illustrator who now works for Pixar. Steve gave me the confidence to put together a one-man show during the summer after I had graduated from high school. The show sold out on the opening night. Bob advised me to go to university to broaden my outlook and I attended the same one that he had graduated from, the University of Toronto.

Upon graduating I illustrated many books, including the MathQuest text books, and exhibited paintings in several countries. While I continue to draw and paint, three years ago I began teaching at a high school in Ancaster, Ontario. Working on Breakout Dinosaurs for the Royal Ontario Museum and being told that they wanted to use one of my paintings in a dinosaur exhibit seemed to fulfill the dreams I had when I first went to the Smithsonian.

When drawing dinosaurs it is important to do as much research as possible to understand the animals and their habitat. I like to look at pictures of the bones or, even better, to look at the actual bones in a museum. If you just look at pictures by other artists you can find yourself repeating mistakes that they made. I like to make little sculptures of the dinosaurs to help me with my paintings. It is important to think of dinosaurs as animals and not as monsters. Looking at the herds of animals in Africa today, it is not too hard to imagine herds of dinosaurs living in similar ways.

I think the best advice I could give to an aspiring artist is to be adaptable. Try not to limit yourself to just one type of subject matter or one type of media, especially when you\'re starting out. It is difficult for anyone to begin a career in illustration, but if you can do several things well it will increase your chances of finding work.

Contact Alan Barnard at:
Alan Barnard
6 Aquasanta Cres.
Hamilton ON L9B 2K8