The first time I saw Invisible Lizard he was on a bedroom ceiling, camouflaged so well that only his eyes showed. I nearly mistook those beautiful eyes for blisters in the paint.

ceilinglizard1
model turtle swimming through water
skelton of turtle done in paper
turtle rex done in paper mache
frog on fence
drawing of a tadpole

Tadpole Rex was inspired by the resemblance of half-grown tadpoles to a therapod dinosaur. These Pacific chorus frogs were breeding in my backyard pond.

Baby frog sitting on a thumb.

To show kids just how big a prehistoric sea turtle could get, I built one out of cardboard (the head is a toilet paper core) and paper mache', scaling it to a toy caveman from my childhood. But you won't find any cavemen in The Voyage of Turtle Rex, which is set in dinosaur days.

What sort of train would forest animals ride? Hollow logs work well for passenger cars, but what about the locomotive? 
After careful study, I learned that animal technology isn't as advanced as ours. So I went way back to one of the earliest steam locomotives. Built in 1829, this English locomotive was named "The Rocket" on account of its astonishing speed-- 29 miles per hour! That seems plenty fast for the Hibernation Station train.
I found this model kit of The Rocket, which gave me all the angles I needed.

Rocket model
BEHIND THE BOOKS
Kurt Cyrus
Author & Illustrator of Children's

Copyright Kurt Cyrus 1997 - 2022

treecostume

What does our choice of costumes say about us? I've lost track of my fellow cub scouts-- maybe Bill and Phil did go into robotics. The others might have become pirates and hobos. All I know for sure is that the kid dressed as a tree grew up to write and illustrate a book titled Trillions of Trees.