David Harrison demonstrates his innovative uses of poetry- The result is reading gains for students of all ages—an interview conducted by Dr. Sam Bommarito.

David Harrison is a longtime friend of mine and a longtime friend of literacy, especially in the state of Missouri, where he just completed his term as the state’s Poet Laureate. His accomplishments in literacy are many. As you will discover in his biography below, he has 110 titles that have sold millions of copies worldwide. He has collaborated with Dr. Tim Rasinski on several projects. He has written the short passages for the book: The Fluency Development Lesson: Closing the Reading Gap. They are designed to both build students’ background and provide them with tools to think about text meaningfully. What follows is his biography and a YouTube video of the interview in which he explains his current work.

BIOGRAPHY

David L. Harrison

David just completed his term as Missouri’s 7^th Poet Laureate. He writes for all ages, including poetry, fiction, and nonfiction for young readers, as well as classroom books for educators. His 110 titles have sold millions of copies worldwide, have been anthologized more than 200 times, and have been translated into a dozen languages. David Harrison Elementary School is named for him, as is a conference room in Springfield’s main library. Among his numerous awards are The Christopher Medal, Pioneer in Education for distinguished service to public education, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for Children’s Literature. Two of his books have represented Missouri at the National Book Fair in Washington, D.C. He was one of six poets selected by the N.Y.C. Public Library System as 2020’s best books of children’s poetry. National Council for Teachers of English has five times chosen his work for its, “Most Notable Books of Poetry for Children.” He has two degrees in science and two honorary doctorates in letters. He is Drury University’s poet laureate and hosts a weekly newspaper column, Poetry from Daily Life. David has new books with four publishers scheduled for release this year. He lives with his wife, Sandy, in Springfield, Missouri. Here is his website link: LINK

Here is a link to the interview. In it, David tells all about the work he is doing

Here is the Piggy Wiglet tattoo:

Piggy Wiglet is out of print but can sometimes be found on resale sites like ThriftBooks. As David explained in the interview, this is a shot at a tattoo that one of his followers has on her leg. She REALLY likes the book. LINK

Here is a link to The Fluency Development Lesson: Closing the Reading Gap LINK

Here is the collage of activities David shared during the interview:

Here is David’s latest book: LINK

Conclusions. David is an amazing person. He has time to publish a blog, has a webpage and remains active in the world of literacy. I’ll remind readers that the work he is collaborating on makes great use of poetry as part of an overall program of repeated reading. The form of repeated reading they are using uses meaningful text and has been shown to have a greater effect size than phonics. As mentioned in the interview, this model is not meant to be a replacement for a phonics program; rather, it is an addition to a phonics program. David’s work is a real game-changer and works for both elementary and middle school students. I hope you will explore the many takeaways you will find in David’s work.

Until next week, Happy Reading and Writing

Dr. Sam

Copyright 2025 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Copyrighted materials for David L Harrison were used with permission. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely this author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.