Welcome to my blog

Hello everyone,

If you’re visiting me here for the first time, welcome. I’m taking a semi-sabbatical this summer to make room for various book projects that require a lot of time.

Word of the Month Challenge goes right on so get busy and share your poem with the readers who come here. Click on Adult Word of the Month and Young Poet Word of the Month Challenge at the top of this page for the guidelines of this ongoing project and join the fun. I’ll be reporting on Word of the Month in November at NCTE in Orlando. This month’s word is (SONG).

When you are ready to post your poem, PLEASE do so by scrolling to the bottom of the appropriate category and dropping your poem into the last box; then hit submit. If you just want to read what has already been posted, you’re in for a treat. I hope you will leave comments when you see something you like.

I will continue to post a Poem of the Week on Sundays and Featured Guests on Fridays (when I have someone).

Also this summer I’m especially interested in posting Guest Readers who wish to send me a poem with picture and/or a brief article of 500 words or less on subjects pertaining in some way to children’s literature: writing, illustrating, editing, marketing, trends, etc. If you are interested, please get in touch!

I enjoyed myself at the New Jersey SCBWI conference and thank those of you who have been in touch since I returned to Springfield. You have my best wishes for great success with your own writing. I invite you to visit my website (Kathy Temean’s handiwork). If you didn’t get copies of my handouts for the poetry workshop in Princeton and would like a set, let me know and I’ll be glad to e-mail it to you.

If you are interested in reading my recent blog article — From Idea to Market: Writing for the Process — here’s the link to save you time looking.  https://davidlharrison.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/david-l-harrison-today/ 

Back to work. Have a good week everyone.

David

Touring my website

I hope that by now most of you have toured my website. Sometimes I get so busy with the blog that I overlook some of the great features that Kathy Temean has designed for the website itself.For example, on my bio page just above the picture of me as a six-year-old fisherman, you can click on ARA Interview to read the interview that Dr. Ann Porter Gifford did of me for the Arkansas Reading Association Journal in 2006. If you click on the picture itself, you’ll see my first poem, inspired by a fish, and also the poem I wrote as an adult (for Connecting Dots) about that first fish I caught so long ago in Arizona.

At the bottom of that same column, just below a picture of me giving a commencement address at Drury University, you’ll see James C. Kirkpatrick Library in red letters. A click on that takes you to a list of mansucripts and correpsondence that I’ve donated to the library, which is on the campus of Central Missouri University Library in Warrensburg, Missouri. I think there are seven boxes of material. Once in a while I hear from a graduate student who is working on an advanced degree and has been studying my work. Which reminds me that I have several more boxes in my basement waiting for delivery to the library.

Have you discovered that if you click on any of the book covers at the tops of each page — Bio, Books, Awards, Guest Book, etc. — you’ll see something about that book and read a few reviews of it? I thought Kathy outdid herself on that feature!

If you look under Visits, you can find the Drury commencement speech by clicking on my picture. I called that talk, “Never Go Camping With One Pack of Hotdogs.” I thought that sounded nice and scholarly.

On that same page you’ll see in red letters SCHOOL VISIT KIT. What you find there comes from my pages on the Scholastic website and is meant to assist those who might be interested in arranging for me to visit a school. I don’t do as many school visits as some of my friends but I see a few thousand students each year.

On the Teacher page I post a new teaching tool each month. The one for November is called “Inspiration Through Observation.” By walking around my house and making a list of what I saw (or imagined) there, I eventually wrote the book of poetry called Alligator in the Closet. I wrote that book partly to demonstrate the technique.

On the For Kids page, each month features one of my books and a puzzle to work out based on words from the book. This is pure Kathy. I’m not sure I could create one of those things!

I hope this gives you a few places to look. There are other features tucked here and there and I hope you will discover them the next time you tour my site.

As for me, it’s back to my “thanks” poem. Yesterday I decided I didn’t like what I’ve been working on so I threw it out to give myself a fresh start. Maybe this time I’ll like the approach better.

David