Show Daily: Interview with Peter McCarty
A Kinder, Gentler Dinosaur
by Nathalie op de Beeck -- Publishers Weekly, 6/10/2004
Readers know Peter McCarty for his softly glowing illustrations and gentle
protagonists. Little Bunny on the Move, his first solo effort, starred
a fuzzy and determined rabbit. Hondo & Fabian, a 2003 Caldecott
Honoree, introduced a good-natured dog and cat. But in McCarty’s newest
creation, T Is for Terrible (Holt, Aug.), he uses his luminous visual
style to limn a distinctly uncuddly character: a Tyrannosaurus rex whose
appetites lead it to self-recrimination. “I cannot help that I grew so enormous
and so enormously hungry,” the T. rex sighs, ogling a smaller lizard with
combined curiosity and malice.
“He’s definitely in denial,” McCarty says
with a laugh. “The Tyrannosaurus can’t help it. He wants to be friends with
other dinosaurs and wishes he wasn’t terrible. It’s a little irreverent, the
humor of it is kind of tough, but I like it that way.”
McCarty
attributes the original idea to his wife, Yun Hee, who was seeking a pleasing
book for a dinosaur-obsessed four-year-old. “She could only find scientific
books or, you know, Barney,” McCarty recalls, and neither the technical nor the
cartoonish suited her needs. “So she started writing a story called ‘T Is Not
for Terrible.’ ” When she invited McCarty to revise her concept, he changed the
title and threw himself into dinosaur research.
McCarty’s early sketches
for the book featured a realistic-looking T. rex. This approach recalled his
studies at the School of Visual Arts, where he learned photorealist painting
from landscape artists and science-fiction illustrators, then emulated the
imaginative work of Lane Smith and Chris Van Allsburg. Gradually, McCarty
blended the lifelike renditions with his signature technique, a gossamer layer
of gray pencil and pastel watercolor hues on a pale background. At first, the T.
rex “still looked a little bit like Hondo,” McCarty admits, referring to the
mellow golden retriever of his second picture book. But as he worked on the
dino’s facial expression, he developed its unpredictable personality. “With this
one I wanted to draw the eyes and the mouth with a lot of emotion, and since he
is talking, I tried to match the emotion of the words with his face.”
Now that T Is for Terrible is finished, McCarty hopes it might
have pleased his boyhood self: “I wouldn’t have wanted something too cute. I
would have wanted something that makes you go ‘grrrrr!’ ”
McCarty will be
signing copies of T Is for Terrible today, 1:30–2:30 p.m.,at table 20, and on Saturday,
1:30–2:30 p.m., in booth 1531, 1631.
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