David L. Harrison - September 2026 Featured Author
About David L. Harrison: Writer for 67 years. 114 books; fiction, nonfiction, poetry, including 18 for classroom teachers. Poet Laureate: Missouri, Drury University, Route 66 Centennial Celebration. Two honorary doctorates of letters. David Harrison Elementary School. Christipher Medal; dozens of other awards. Numerous state reading lists. Work seven hours weekdays.
Congrats on your soon-to-be-released picture book, Pumpkin on a Vine, which will be released on September 8, 2026. Tell us a little about it.
Thank you for featuring me. I appreciate it! Several years ago, a professor friend of mine at Bringham Young University was working with a kindergarten teacher. He wrote to ask if I had on hand a fall-ish story that could be acted out by 5-year-olds. I did not but offered to write something for him. It turned out to be a rhymed verse about how to plant and raise a pumpkin. Started like this.
Take a pole,
poke a hole,
drop a seed,
pull a weed,
give a shout
the sprout is out,
I was told that the kids in Salt Lake City loved the poem so I kept it in my files. Years later, Jane Yolen and I wrote a collection of poems about seeds and I stuck the pumpkin poem into the mix. An editor at one house said she couldn’t use the collection but loved my pumpkin poem. Alas, her committee turned it down. We tried again and got the same result at Holiday House. Grace Maccarone couldn’t use the collection but offered me a contract for Pumpkin on a Vine. I wrote a watermelon poem to replace the pumpkin poem and Jane and I eventually placed our seed collection at Bushel & Peck. It’s slated for a 2028 pub date.
How did you get started? Did you always want to be a children's author?
My undergraduate and graduate degrees (Drury University, Emory University, were in science. In the one course I took in creative writing, I wrote a single story and based on it my professor encouraged me to become a writer. For ten years I wrote mostly short and short-short stories for adult markets. I knew nothing about writing for children and had minimal interest in trying.
We'd love to hear more about your writing journey. What's the process been like?
It has been a rather long journey that now spans eight decades. In 2022, I wrote a book about my writer’s journey called This Life, an Autobiography. It was published by Missouri State University through the Ozark Studies Institute. My journey began with learning how to write. That took eight years with a smattering of magazine sales and 67 rejections, all for adult markets. One night in 1967, an idea occurred to me that happened to be for children. I wrote it and sold it to a mass market publisher for today’s equivalent of $3,000. The Boy with a Drum sold 2 million copies. I decided to pay more attention to writing for young people.
What is your daily writing routine?
I work each weekday from 6:00 a.m. -1:00 p.m. I spend the first hour writing my daily blog post (http://davidlharrison.com ), the second hour responding to and initiating correspondence, and the rest working on something. I rarely take a break. I’ve written on my phone, in journals, on scraps of paper, in the car (when parked or not driving), on planes, at the beach, in hotel rooms, in emergency rooms (my mother’s), in hospital rooms (my own), at my desk (in Springfield, MO), and at the dining room table (at our place in Florida).
How have you stayed connected to the writing community?
I belong to Society of Midland Authors, SCBWI, St. Louis Writers Guild, Ozark Writers League, Springfield (MO) Writers Guild, SouthWest Writers League, NCTE, IRA, and others. I’ve visited schools, keynoted, and presented hundreds of times at conferences, meetings, and on college campuses across America, including SCBWI state events in New Jersey and Missouri. I also do my share of writing workshops and have written dozens of articles for magazines and journals. I keep up with fellow writers on a regular basis. Last year I worked with sixty of them from the United States and three other countries to create a free video library of each contributor reading a column and a poem about Poetry from Daily Life: (https://www.youtube.com/@PoetryfromDailyLife-e2j ).
How has networking with other writers helped you along the way?
No one understands a welder like a fellow welder. Same for bird watchers, as it is for writers. We need one another. I know how hard it is to find a traditional publisher, with or without an agent, so I celebrate the accomplishment when someone I know has a new book out or has some other writing-related good news to share. I still correspond with writers I met decades ago at conferences, lit fests, etc. Keeping up with friends and colleagues is part of my daily routine.
Who would you say influences you and your writing?
I’ve read a lot of Vonnegut (took a workshop of his one year at I.U.), Twain, Hemingway, Steinbeck, O’Henry, Kooser, Collins, Eliot, Updike, Heller, Kingsolver, Didion, Angelou, Baldwin, Proulx… Each has been a mentor. I’m currently rereading An E. B. White Reader (Harper & Row, 1966). Reading White’s work and writing dictums is like getting a pep talk before starting a new book, which I am.
What challenges have you experienced that you didn't expect?
Too many changes to count over the last half-century. What was once a general market is now splintered into so many special interest needs that it’s impossible to keep up with them all. I go back to when Random House was housed in modest, cramped quarters in New York. Bennett Cerf was still around. Ted Geisel was busy revolutionizing children’s literature with his Dr. Seuss stories. I published my second book with them, Little Turtle’s Big Adventure, in 1969. These days, placing a manuscript is not unlike playing miniature golf in the dark with a blindfold.
What do you love about being a writer?
Writing. Learning that a child liked something of mine. Friends in the business.
What do you do when you are not writing?
Afternoons and evenings I spend with Sandy. We began dating in high school, were married the year I graduated from Drury. Whatever we do, travel or sit at home and talk, is fine with me. We also spend part of the year in our condo in Florida. My dad used to call us “bookends.” Said we were meant for each other. (He actually said, “deserved” each other, but I think he meant “meant.” We’ve travelled quite a bit, favoring the Virgin Islands.
What is the best advice you've ever been given about writing? What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out?
Writing is different for everyone. Learning how to write, for most, is a long, tedious journey. Attending workshops helps. Reading books about the craft helps. Getting feedback from qualified readers (when you can get one) helps. Visiting schools and writing articles and making presentations all help. But unless you are willing to put in the time writing, nothing else matters. E. B. White’s English composition and writing professor at Cornell used to lean forward and repeat important messages three times. In like manner, I would say, “You must write. You must write. You must write.”
Is there anything else you'd like to mention or highlight?
In June of this year, a recent picture book, A Tree is a Community, came out in a South Korean e-book as an animated translation. It was previously translated into Portuguese. In total, my books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and anthologized in more than 200 other books around the world. My poetry has been sandblasted into the Children’s Garden sidewalk at the Burton Barr Library in Phoenix, painted around a bookmobile in Pueblo, Colorado, inspired a play (Somebody Catch My Homework, by Sandra Fenichel Asher), arranged as songs and performed on stage, read on Captain Kangaroo’s national program, read on BBC, and told by storytellers in the U.S., England, Germany, and Canada.
What are you currently working on? Anything else upcoming you'd like us to know about?
A new book came out in July, co-written with Mary Jo Fresch and titled The Phonics Handbook Poetry Collection, 101 Poems. I wrote the 101 poems. Co-writing a book for grades 4-8 with Laura Robb. It will be for classroom teachers to support their efforts to help students read with better fluency and comprehension. Several picture book ideas in various stages.