Monday, March 2, 2020

David L. Harrison Puts His "Best Words Forward" in AFTER DARK

Today it's my pleasure to welcome David L. Harrison, in celebration of his latest book for kids AFTER DARK: Poems About Nocturnal Creatures, illustrations by Stephanie Laberis (Boyds Mills and Kane/WordSong). You may have seen something about this book already as part of the blog tour David and the publisher put together.


As my regular readers know, I have a tradition of giving book creators 4 simple prompts and asking them to respond specifically about the current project. I'm delighted to offer David's responses below. The italicized/bold bits are the bits that particularly resonate with me. Enjoy! 

The delicious:

DH: When we look at a body of water, we wonder what’s going on below the surface where we can’t see. In the same way, I look into the night and try to imagine what creatures are out and about and what they might be up to. Mysteries of the dark abound. For about as long as I can remember they have beckoned to me, stirred my imagination, made me need to know more. When I was six years old camping in a tent with my parents beside a mountain lake in Arizona, I lay on my cot in the dark electrified by the sounds of bears down the lane banging on metal trash cans after a free meal. In third grade I draped a sheet over our back yard clothesline, lighted it from within, and marveled at the insects and bats that appeared out of the dark to dart and swoop around me. Today when a raccoon runs across my roof at night or my headlights startle a possum scurrying off the road or I spot a fox hurry/sniffing along a lake bank, I immediately want to know the rest of their stories. Writing this book was the result of my curiosity. Unraveling each story, forming each poem, was, for me, delicious. 

The difficult:

DH: In Egypt 3,000 years ago, a fact was that bees came from the tears of the sun god Ra. What makes any book based on fact difficult is making sure the facts are as true as current knowledge allows. I come with two degrees in zoology, dozens of nonfiction books, and a lifetime of observing animals, but for a book like AFTER DARK, experts on specific animals were called upon to critique my work and offer additional facts and insights. In all there were fifteen authorities who looked at the writing or illustrations to help make sure we were getting it right. For these I was grateful. The difficulty in writing books for young readers isn’t the writing itself, although that’s important, or in finding ways to make the material appealing, although that’s important, too; it’s in making sure the writer provides readers with the truth. Children believe in us. They trust us. If we get it wrong, they get it wrong. It’s a responsibility the writer carries with him/her throughout a project like this one.

The unexpected:

DH: I’ve written about most of these animals in previous books and poems so in some ways it was like greeting old friends. But a writer always begins from scratch as though he is meeting his subjects for the first time. Facts DO change. I’ve written three published books about caves but I started a fourth one recently and approached it as though I knew nothing about my caves. In the case of AFTER DARK, I had two nice surprises during the time I spent preparing to write the book. One was about male porcupines. I didn’t realize how vocal they can be or how viciously they fight during the mating season to determine which male will win the right to approach a female. If there’s anything I’d rather not see coming toward me more than a porcupine, it would be an angry, lovesick porcupine spoiling for a fight! The other surprise was that armadillos can walk under water. Most of the armadillos I’ve seen were dead ones beside the highway. I hadn’t read about their mastery underwater and that was a fact I took pleasure in learning and passing along to my readers. 

Anything else:

DH: At times I fear that poetry attracts more poets than readers. Somehow we have to entice busy children to slow down long enough to read a poem, roll it around in their heads for a moment, and decide to like it -- even though they might rather be reading another book in an unending series of action figures. That’s why poets need to put our best words forward. We need to provide a varied menu, rich in imagery, quick to capture interest, seasoned with surprises and, yes, sometimes even humor. Kirkus has given AFTER DARK a good review, and my favorite part is this: “Twenty-one animals who live by the light of the moon get profiled in Harrison's poems, written in a variety of forms, some rhymed and most not. . . a fine collection of poetical odes to a nicely diverse group of nighttime fauna." Yay. Someone noticed!
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Thank you, David, so much for sharing yourself with us today. CONGRATULATIONS!! 

16 comments:

  1. Irene, thank you for hosting me today. It has been a pleasure to respond to your questions as I thought back over the process of bringing AFTER DARK from idea to book. As you well know, it's a long often surprising journey.

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  2. I, too, love David's line, "That’s why poets need to put our best words forward. We need to provide a varied menu, rich in imagery, quick to capture interest, seasoned with surprises and, yes, sometimes even humor." That's definitely a smart and important way to approach a collection - and this one's beautiful!

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  3. Thank you Irene and David. Irene, I love your questions and David, your answers. I have so enjoyed the various blog posts celebrating and introducing this book. David, take heart--poetry is enjoying a bit of a revival in my middle school world. I love and push poetry, kids are wild about Kwame Alexander's novels in verse and are now asking for collections. I "sell" poetry as "shorter than a book but packed with as much meaning and enjoyment." Many congratulations on the book and the continued writing.

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  4. I think my favorite lines in this post are, "Children believe in us. They trust us. If we get it wrong, they get it wrong." This is so true! Thank you, David, for writing poetry and prose that children can trust! As an example, last week I shared a poem from David's new book about deer mice with a 3rd grade classroom. It mentioned the male returning to the nest with food for the babies. What? The male helps? We looked it up, and learned this is true! What a great learning moment for these kids! (And me, as well!) Susan Hutchens

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  5. Thanks for the interview, Irene. David, I like what you said about enticing children to slow down long enough to read a poem. They are appealing because they're short and leave plenty of white (or in this case, black) space on the page, but they shouldn't be read in a hurry. They should be read slowly enough to savor the language and ideas. Congrats again on a special book!

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  6. Good morning, Jane. As we near the final stop (tomorrow) of my first blog tour, I hope I'm going to find the right words to express my gratitude to all my magnificent hosts along the way. More about that soon!

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  7. Matt, my response to Jane made it through so I'll try again for the third time to thank you for your kind remarks and for being such a stellar host!

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  8. Linda, thank you for your words of encouragement about poetry. Yay to that!

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  9. Su, I'm glad you led your students on a fact checking mission. What a wonderful way to challenge kids to challenge what they read. I'm finishing a manuscript now that's set for next spring. When it was sent to an expert to check my facts, he didn't find anything to correct. I felt like I had just received an A on a major test!

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  10. I love David's example of the "fact" of bees coming from the tears of the sun god Ra. Scientists can only disprove something, so what we understand as fact changes with better tools and observation--and that should keep those of us trying to write nonfiction on our toes! Thanks for sharing more After Dark delight!

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  11. I think I'm sorry that this blog tour is about to close, David & Irene. Each host, with David's input, too, has shared more about how the book came to be, what David, even with long-time knowledge, learned when researching, and how poetry can offer so much information to children if we get those facts right. They can learn the poetic feeling as they learn about the world. Thanks for a great post, Irene, and a terrific book, David.

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  12. Thanks to both of you for this fine interview. I especially appreciated David's attitude of respect for children, emphasizing that they trust us as adults and as authors. That is huge and I really appreciate it.

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  13. Thank you Irene and thank you David. Thank you for pointing out how facts change. Thank you for showing how kids trust us, and we shouldn't disappoint them, but providing them with the truth while making the process of learning that truth fun and appealing. Thank you.

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