Dinosaur adventure books for boys—Red Rex by Matthew Mellema

Dinosaur Adventure Books for Boys

What if you lived in a world where dinosaurs roamed freely among humans?

What if your only dream was to become a dinosaur rider, but it seemed the odds were against you?

What if your only chance of success was to win a competition with a group of misfits for teammates?

Welcome to The Sword and Story Podcast—where we help Christian families find exciting, faith-filled books for their boys.

Our mission is to raise strong, courageous warriors for the Kingdom of God. Join us on a quest to discover stories that inspire our boys to grow into godly young men.

I’m your host, Laurie Christine. I’m an author, bible teacher, wife, and mom to four wild, wonderful, boys. I’m the author of the Dragon Slayer Bible Series, adventure-packed biblical fiction and devotions for middle-grade boys. 

Our guest author today is Matthew Mellema.

Matthew Mellema was born and raised in Colorado Springs: a place surrounded by dinosaur bones. After earning an English degree and a law degree, Matthew returned to Colorado, where the dinosaur bones of his childhood reignited his imagination. Matthew lives now with his wife and four kids in Colorado Springs. He hosts the Anselm society’s podcast, “Believe to See.” and the co-host of the Brothers Mellema YouTube channel. They talk about cryptids, ancient cultures, and (of course) dinosaurs.

Red Rex

Dinosaur Adventure Books for Middle Grade Boys

Red Rex – In a hidden kingdom where dinosaurs roam freely, Carthus is trapped. The fourteen-year-old orphan guards a stegosaurus herd for his uncaring uncle and dreams of training as a dinosaur rider at the ancient school of Koganri. The problem is, he’s a commoner, so his only hope is to pass an impossibly hard entrance exam. After countless hours of study, Carthus earns the kingdom’s only passing grade. However, elite schoolmasters group him with the misfits and foreigners in their plot to rid Koganri of students they deem unworthy. Carthus must win a series of dinosaur-riding competitions, or his chances of staying at the school are nil. But he can’t win the Maybranch alone—it’s a team competition. To keep his dream alive, Carthus must help his teammates get along so they can joust on gallos, fly on pterodactyls, and give commands to a surly t-rex. The fate of their future depends on it, even more than they know.

More from Matthew Mellema

Believe to See Podcast

Brothers Mellema YouTube Channel

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW 

Red Rex by Matthew Mellema

Laurie Christine: Matthew Mellema, welcome to the Sword and Story Podcast.

Matthew Mellema: Thank you so much, it’s great to be here.

Laurie Christine: I am excited to talk about your book, Red Rex, which is all about dinosaurs. Before we dive in, I thought it would be fun to just have a chat about dinosaurs, because what kid, especially what boy, doesn’t love them. Tell me a little bit about where this love of dinosaurs came from. You seem to be a bit of an expert after poking around on your website. Maybe “dinosaur nerd” would be a good term. How did your fascination begin?

Matthew: I would describe myself as an enthusiastic amateur. I have loved dinosaurs for so long I can’t really pinpoint when it started. It’s kind of like asking when did you realize you liked chocolate. As long as I can remember, it’s just been there. I grew up here in Colorado Springs, and Colorado has, to brag on my state a little, some of the best fossil beds in the world. A lot of very famous dinosaurs were first discovered here, so there were always great opportunities to go and see them. I’d always read all the books, had my treasured dinosaur story collections that I went to over and over, had my favorite dinosaurs, talked about it with my brothers. A lot of kids love dinosaurs and some of us keep loving them even when we’re grown-ups. That is absolutely the case for me. I still love them just as much as I did when I was a kid.

Laurie Christine: That is awesome. Have you ever actually come across any dinosaur fossils, like out in the woods or in your backyard?

Matthew: I have never actually come across any fossils out in the wild, and I kind of wish I had now that you mention it. There are plenty of places around here where you can find little fern fossils locally. I’ve never found any, but now that you mention it, that should be one of my goals for the coming year. It’s made my bucket list.

Laurie Christine: I’ve never been to Colorado Springs. How do you see these dinosaur fossils? Are they in museums, or are they still in the ground where you can go and look at them?

Matthew: The good thing about being in Colorado Springs is there are lots of options all over the state. Over on the western side you have Dinosaur National Monument, which is very famous for its huge collection of fossils. Up in Denver there is an excellent natural history museum with a huge T-Rex skeleton right as you walk in. They used to terrify me when I was a kid, but in a really cool way. And then just down the road in the next town over, Woodland Park, there is this excellent little museum. It’s tiny but chock full of great dinosaur skeletons. You are perfectly allowed to make fun of me for this, but that was the first date my wife and I ever went on.

Laurie Christine: Well, she must be perfect for you if she wanted to go along to the dinosaur museum.

Matthew: That’s when I knew she was the one.

Favorite Dinosaurs

Laurie Christine: Do you have a favorite dinosaur?

Matthew: I spent a lot of time on this one. When I was a kid, my favorite was the Stegosaurus. My brother’s was the Triceratops, and it was always an argument about which would win in a fight. Now as an adult, I love the T-Rex. I know it’s a basic choice, but I really do love it, and that’s a big reason my book is about the T-Rex. And then, not technically a dinosaur, but the Quetzalcoatlus. It’s a flying reptile and the largest known thing that has ever flown. When it was standing on the ground, it was as tall as a giraffe, and it could fly. I think they are absolutely fantastic. I can’t get enough of them.

Laurie Christine: That is super cool. My book series has dinosaurs in a couple of the books because the first two books in the series, In Land of Giants, take place before the flood, so there are still some dinosaurs around. It was really fun to bring some of that into my Bible stories.

Busting Dinosaur Myths

Laurie Christine: Can you think of a dinosaur myth you can debunk for us? Something we all grew up thinking was true but actually isn’t?

Matthew: Absolutely. This one hit me a few years ago, much later than it should have. If you’ve ever seen Jurassic Park, one of the prominent dinosaurs is the Dilophosaurus. There’s that very cool scene where it has the frill and spits venom out and eats the bad guy. I always just assumed as a kid that was what the Dilophosaurus actually did. It only occurred to me recently that there is actually no fossil evidence for any of that. I mean, theoretically it could have happened, but they just added it as something cool. As sad as it is for me to say, Dilophosaurus probably did not spit venom.

Laurie Christine: I learned something similar while doing research for my own book. I had velociraptors in Land of Giants, and I found out that contrary to the Jurassic Park movies, velociraptors were not these ginormous beasts twice as tall as a human. They were probably more like the size of a turkey or something. Is that accurate?

Matthew: You are absolutely correct. Actual velociraptors would have been maybe the size of a medium-sized dog. The dinosaur the movie seems to actually be based on is the Deinonychus, which looked very similar to the movie version. I think Michael Crichton, the original author of the book, changed it to velociraptor just because it’s a cooler name. “Raptor” sounds a little better than “Deinonychus.” But knowing that, you can picture the movie velociraptor and know it’s actually a Deinonychus.

Laurie Christine: So there was an actual dinosaur that resembled what was in the movie. They just had the wrong name.

Matthew: Exactly. And it gets even cooler. There’s a related species called the Utahraptor, found just one state over from me. They’re even bigger. Picture the movie velociraptor, only twice as big. Utahraptors are absolutely terrifying. I love them.

Family Life in Colorado Springs

Laurie Christine: Before we dive into your book, tell us a little about your family and the ages of your kids.

Matthew: Me and my wife here in Colorado Springs have four kids. The oldest three are boys and then the youngest is a girl. The oldest is nine and in fourth grade, then we have a second grader, a first grader, and our youngest girl is four and a half.

Laurie Christine: Our listeners are all parents of boys, grandparents of boys, caregivers of boys. Have you noticed any differences after having three boys and then a little girl came along?

Matthew: Yes. Not only did I have the three boys, but growing up I was one of three brothers, so I understood that dynamic extremely well. With our daughter, we wondered whether she would be the tomboy who just wants to hang out with the brothers or whether she would go full princess with pink and ballet tutus and all that. What we’ve seen is she kind of does both. She is absolutely the girly girl and she will wear the pink and has her princess tiara, but she will still be rough and tumble with the brothers. It is hilarious seeing how different she is in some ways and how she goes right along with it in others. It has been a blast. And this goes without saying, my daughter is excellent at manipulating me into doing whatever she wants.

Laurie Christine: Little girls just have that way about them. We have four boys, so we did not experience that little girl at the end. Now that my youngest is nine, I often think about what I would do with girls. I love dinosaurs and robots and dragons and all of that kind of stuff with my boys. I think God knew what he was doing when he gave me boys.

Matthew: My wife, the last time we were at the Dinosaur Museum, was really impressing me with her dinosaur knowledge. Apparently just having three boys around encouraged her to learn more about dinosaurs. It’s a win-win for me.

Laurie Christine: You wouldn’t believe what I’ve learned about taxidermy having four sons, several of whom are really into it. But we won’t get into that.

Inside Red Rex

Laurie Christine: So let’s talk about your book. It’s called Red Rex, named after the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Give us a little summary of what it’s all about.

Matthew: All right. Let’s go back to the early parts of the Roman Empire, near the end of the Third Punic War, around 120 BC. During that time period, there was one island on Earth where dinosaurs still existed and lived alongside humans. Well, obviously the humans would start a school of dinosaur riding. And let’s say you live on that island. Your name is Karthus, and you are a mere Stegosaurus herder. You don’t want to be stuck herding Stegosaurus your whole life. His goal as a preteen boy in that era is to get into that famous school of dinosaur riding. And once you’re there, you’re going to have to learn to ride all the dinosaurs in the surviving school, which is a whole other adventure altogether.

So that is the basic premise of Red Rex. It follows Karthus, a preteen adolescent boy, as he goes to the ancient and noble dinosaur-riding school of Koganri, makes friends there, tries to survive the different factions, and also tries to survive riding a Triceratops and eventually taming a T-Rex.

Laurie Christine: I have read the first few chapters of the book and it is so fun. There’s this great sense that dinosaurs are just commonplace. It’s not like the Jurassic Park movies where the dinosaurs are evil and trying to destroy everything. In this world, you’re herding dinosaurs over here and riding them over there. At one point a bus goes by being pulled by a giant dinosaur. So instead of sheep and cows and horses, they’ve got all the different varieties of dinosaurs filling those same roles. It’s really fun.

Matthew: Yeah, that was really fun for me to build out because one of the rules I set for myself in the world-building was no present-day animals. No horses, no cows, no sheep, no chickens, no birds, just dinosaurs. So I had to figure out what dinosaurs would fill each role. What are the cattle? What fills the role of a horse? The velociraptors are kind of like the sheepdogs, herding everyone up. What dinosaurs do they eat? What do they ride into battle? And I’ve noticed just interacting with boys who’ve read the book, whether at schools or a book fair, it is such a fun topic to get boys engaged. You ask them what kind of dinosaur they’d want to ride and the conversation just takes off from there. I’ve gotten a lot of good ideas from them, really.

What Makes Red Rex Appeal to Boys

Laurie Christine: That’s really great. What are some other ways you feel this book specifically appeals to boys?

Matthew: I tried to combine the two things that have always fascinated me. We’ve already been talking about dinosaurs. But I think in general, if you’re an author especially writing for a middle-grade audience, a good north star is to ask what you were interested in when you were that age. So I have the dinosaur part. And I also remember around that age discovering the Dinotopia books by James Gurney, this super talented painter who creates these utopian worlds where dinosaurs live alongside humans. They’re gorgeous, I love the paintings. But the one thing that always drove me nuts was that it was a peaceful utopian society. They didn’t ride the dinosaurs into battle, which is no fun. So I tried to bring that element in too. How would an army use Triceratops in battle? How do you fly a Pteranodon into combat? I take the dinosaurs and incorporate them into battle scenarios, and the boys who read the book always have a ton of great ideas about it.

Laurie Christine: I’m curious whether your own boys have influenced the storyline at all. Have you talked through ideas with them?

Matthew: My oldest has agreed to be a beta reader for book two in the series, which is set to come out in 2026. His first major note was that book two did not have enough action in the first chapter. So there was a little too much talking. His main position is more dinosaur fights, which is a valid viewpoint and I do want to incorporate his edits.

Laurie Christine: You can’t go wrong with more dinosaur fights or more dinosaurs riding into battle. Sometimes as authors we feel like we don’t want to overdo it in one direction, but the kids are like, no, that is exactly what I want. Give me more of that.

Matthew: The north star I use in those situations is asking what would 12-year-old me have wanted. That is generally the decision I go with when figuring out the next creative choice.

Laurie Christine: That’s a good standard to live by. I don’t have that privilege since 12-year-old me was not reading dinosaur books, but I do have my four boys to help me gauge. I’ll show them different cover designs and ask what they think, and they’ll say, “No, that looks stupid, Mom.” Okay, we’ll go with something else.

The Story Within the Story

Laurie Christine: You were telling me that this is kind of a story within a story. Can we talk about that, or does that give away too much of the secret sauce of the book?

Matthew: We can talk about it. I have always loved the concept of the frame story, the story within the story. I loved The Princess Bride growing up and how it was a story being told by someone else. And if you look at the novel, William Goldman as the author even puts himself in as a character finding the book, with all these digressions. I have always wanted that to be part of this book.

The frame story I have is a fictional version of me finding a manuscript that an eccentric, crackpot conspiracy theorist from the Victorian era claimed to have found from this ancient dinosaur civilization. The frame story is me trying to unravel and translate it. Then throughout the main text of Red Rex, there is a series of footnotes where both fictional me and this crackpot, Sir Alfred Lemon, give different explanations that add depth to the world of the story.

I have always loved the frame story, but going back to the north star of 12-year-old me, I always loved getting all the extra information. I wanted the extra world-building material and I liked that sense of mystery, almost this Indiana Jones feeling of trying to discover and untangle an ancient mystery. I wanted to throw that in and also give all of the dinosaur kids out there all the dino information they could ever possibly want.

Laurie Christine: I love that. As I was reading the prologue, because it’s you, Matthew Mellema, who discovered this ancient manuscript buried beneath the tunnels of Oxford University, I kept thinking, wait, is this part of the story or is this true? That is such a fun bit of extra intrigue for kids. Did he actually find this ancient scroll that told about all the dinosaurs?

I also love the footnotes because that is something I have learned about the difference between writing for boys and writing for girls. Boys want that information. They want to know how the bomb was constructed, or walk me step by step through the sword fight, or tell me everything about the dinosaurs. The footnotes are such a great way to include all of that without weighing down the story with information dumps.

Matthew: Exactly. As authors, we often have the temptation to over-explain things in the main part of the story, and we generally need to rein that in. But there is a subset of readers who say over-explain, give me all the explanation. For those readers, the footnotes are there. And if the reader doesn’t really care about the intricacies of Triceratops armor, they can skim past the footnotes and lose nothing, but the information is still there for the kids who really want it.

Faith Themes and Character Growth

Laurie Christine: One of the questions I always ask guests on the show is how does this book help boys to become strong, courageous warriors for the kingdom of God? What are some of the themes running through the book that can encourage boys to live faithfully and with courage?

Matthew: I tried to do that in a couple of ways. One was trying my best to make the main character Karthus very relatable. He is the first-person narrator of the story so you are inside his head, and I’m hoping his motivations are something a lot of boys can resonate with. Karthus is an orphan raised by distant relatives who don’t really care for him and don’t care about his dream of becoming a dinosaur rider. So his attitude very early on is that he is just going to look out for himself and not for other people. That is an understandable attitude, but also something he needs to move beyond.

Throughout the story there is this narrative of not only learning to care for others, but also looking for something beyond himself. He needs to stop turning inward on his own concerns and start looking out for other people and taking action that matters beyond just himself. That is hopefully what he ends up having to do by the end of the climactic battle. That is where his story arc takes him.

Back Cover and Reader Reviews

Laurie Christine: I’m going to read the back cover of the book so our listeners can get a great picture of what this story is all about.

In a hidden kingdom where dinosaurs roam freely, Karthus is trapped. The 14-year-old orphan guards a Stegosaurus herd for his uncaring uncle and dreams of training as a dinosaur rider at the ancient school of Koganri. The problem is he is a commoner, so his only hope is to pass an impossibly hard entrance exam.

After countless hours of study, Karthus earns the kingdom’s only passing grade. However, elite schoolmasters group him with the misfits and foreigners in their plot to rid Koganri of students they deem unworthy. Karthus must win a series of dinosaur riding competitions, or his chances of staying at the school are nil. But he can’t win the May Branch alone. It’s a team competition.

To keep his dream alive, Karthus must help his teammates get along so they can joust on Gallosaurs, fly on Pterodactyls, and give commands to a surly T-Rex. The fate of their future depends on it, even more than they know.

And here are a few reader reviews of Red Rex.

“My boys are 13 and 11. They are big readers and they love a good story. The author has brilliantly created a story that draws older children back into their earlier fascination with dinosaurs.”

“I’m always on the hunt for books that get my kids’ imaginations firing and point them toward goodness, truth, and beauty. Red Rex fits the bill. If you love the Green Ember or Wingfeather books, you’ll love Red Rex. Highly recommend.”

“We bought this book for our nephew who is 10, and he read the whole book in three days. He loved it and couldn’t put it down. The book engaged his imagination and he can’t wait for the next one. Highly recommend this book for young kids.”

What’s Next

Laurie Christine: What’s next for you? Are there more books coming in the Red Rex universe?

Matthew: You can expect Red Rex Book 2, title to be determined, tentatively in late summer 2026. And then Book 3 should be coming out maybe spring 2027. Those are the next two books in the series.

In the meantime, I also have a short-story prequel that you can get before Book 1. It’s the story of Karthus’ best friend Hano and how he got to the dinosaur island. That is available for free, and all you need to do is sign up for my newsletter. A brand new prequel short story will also be coming out in mid-November. That one is a story of the flying dinosaur Quetzalcoatlus in the land of the Maya. Just subscribe to the email newsletter and you’ll get that one too.

Laurie Christine: When this podcast airs it will probably be spring of 2026, so those reader magnets will definitely be available. I will have links in the show notes on my website for the show and for those reader magnets. Where else can our listeners find your books and connect with you?

Matthew: You can find my website at MatthewMellema.com, or search for Matthew Mellema or Brothers Mellema, since it’s something my brother and I work on together. My brother Brian actually designed the book cover for Red Rex and we collaborate on a lot of stuff. You can order the book on my publisher’s website, Bandersnatch Books, or on Amazon. The other places to find me are my podcast, Believe to See, which I do at the Anselm Society, and my YouTube channel with my brother, Brothers Mellema.

Laurie Christine: I will have links to all of those places in the show notes, so be sure to check out Matthew’s books and his podcast. Matthew Mellema, thank you so much for coming on the show today. We really had fun talking with you.

Matthew: Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.