My Tell Me Your Story Guest for September is Lisa Harkrader (https://www.ldharkrader.com/). Lisa grew up in a small town in Kansas. When she was in the third grade, she wanted to be a writer and an artist. She also wanted to be a spy, a psychiatrist, and second baseman for the Kansas City Royals.Those last three haven’t happened, but she is a prolific writer and illustrator who has published forty-five books for children, including the award-winning Airball: My Life in Briefs, The Adventures of Beanboy, and the Misadventures of Nobbin Swill detective series. Lisa recently ventured into writing mysteries for adults, publishing short stories in several anthologies, including SoWest: Danger Awaits, A Right Cozy Culinary Crime, Colorado Mystery Merge 2, and the upcoming Bouchercon anthology The Lines We Cross. She has received the William Allen White Award and four Kansas Notable Books awards. Lisa lives in Tonganoxie, Kansas, with her husband and two children. And she still wants to be a spy.
One of Those Somebodies
Lisa Harkrader
I love books. I have always loved books. Even before I could read, I loved books.
I had great parents who, from a very early age, read to me before bed. They let me pick out the books each night, and almost always, one of the books I picked was The Night Before Christmas. I didn’t care what time of year it was. It could’ve been April. It could’ve been July. That’s the book I wanted. And that book convinced my parents I was brilliant—so brilliant that they thought, even before I started school, I had taught myself to read. Because I’d heard that book so many times, I’d memorized every word, including where to turn the pages. So when they weren’t reading it to me, I would read it to myself. (I can still recite it today, word for word. That’s how much I loved it.)
When I did start school, I discovered the most glorious place on earth—the school library. An entire room filled with books! Actually, in my grade school, the library was housed on the old stage at one end of the gym-slash-cafeteria, divided from the lunchroom only by the heavy, dusty theatre curtain that may have been gold originally, but by the time I came along, was sort of a dirt color. It was dark back there, and the librarian, Mrs. Abplanalp—yes, that was really her name; we called her Mrs. A because our little grade-school mouths couldn’t say Abplanalp—watched our every move with great suspicion. But I didn’t care. There were books. Shelves and shelves and shelves of books. I always checked out the maximum number allowed and had them all read long before I needed to check them back in again the next week.
It wasn’t till I was in the third grade that I realized somebody had to write all those books, and I decided right then and there that someday, one of those somebodies would be me. It was no longer enough to read books. I decided I had to write and illustrate them, too. (I also wanted to be a psychiatrist and a spy and play second base for the Kansas City Royals. Third graders dream big.)
And third grade was big. My teacher that year was Mrs. Wager. I’d seen Mrs. Wager in the hallway when I was in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade—with her tight iron-gray curls and her sensible black shoes and the gruff no-nonsense way she walked. I estimated she was about 150 years old, and I thought she looked mean. I was not happy I had to spend all of third grade with the mean teacher.
But when I got into her class, I also got a lesson in how looks can be deceiving. Mrs. Wager with the iron-gray curls was probably the kindest, most supportive teacher in the entire school. She loved her students, and encouraged them to do the things they loved and were good at.
So, since I had recently decided to be a writer and illustrator, I spent my free time writing and illustrating poems and giving them to Mrs. Wager.
And she loved them! At least, she said she did. They were third-grade poems written on a Big Chief tablet—how good could they be? But Mrs. Wager was so enthusiastic that I spent the summer after third grade writing and illustrating even more poems. I stapled them together with a construction paper cover. It was my first book! And when I went back to fourth grade, I made my way to Mrs. Wager’s classroom and gave it to her.
And she loved it! At least, she said she did. But I think she honestly did, because many years later, when I was in college, I came home and ran into Mrs. Wager in the post office. (She was still 150 years old.) She talked about my book of poems. She said she still had it, she was still proud of me, and she hoped I was following my dreams. When your third grade teacher gives you that kind of encouragement, you kind of hate to let her down.
Eventually third grade ended, and I moved on. I went to college and earned a degree in art—because, as you will recall, I both wrote and illustrated my third grade poems—and then began working as a graphic designer. I got married and started a family, and from time to time I would still try to write, sort of, and I read Writer’s Digest, and I wandered through bookstores, dreaming my dream.
But I wasn’t actually doing anything about it. . . until I started watching a TV show called Thirtysomething. (For you youngsters out there, it was a popular ensemble show from the 1980s.) One of the characters in that show gave me the kick in the pants I needed. That character was Nancy Weston.
Nancy was a bored stay-at-home mom in a sort of crumbling marriage who also had a degree in art—like I did. She’d made up a bedtime story to tell her kids, and one day she decided to write and illustrate it as a picture book. And then, a couple episodes later, an editor decided to publish it. He also thought she was pretty hot and asked her out, which caused her a lot of anguish, what with her crumbling marriage and all.
And this really ticked me off. Not because of the whole “I think I’ll write a children’s book over coffee this morning and get a big publishing contract later this afternoon.” Which is maddening enough. Or the editor’s whole “Yes, I’d love to publish your book and also take you to dinner. . . and maybe more.” Which is clearly unethical.
No, it was because Nancy Weston was living my life, achieving my dream, and worst of all, she wasn’t even a real person! That’s when I began writing with purpose. Envy and anger kicked me into gear.
I started with short stories and soon saw my stories published in magazines like Cricket and Ladybug. I moved on to longer works, and today when I walk into a library, some of those books on the shelves were written by me. I’m one of the somebodies. My third grade self can hardly believe it. And it’s all thanks to two terrific parents, a 200-year-old Christmas story, my third grade teacher, and a nonexistent person in a long-canceled TV show.
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Visit Lisa at her website:
https://www.lisaharkrader.com
Amazon page:
https://tinyurl.com/LisaHarkrader
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