Shawn Harris spent the fall switching between two stages: classrooms where he demonstrated a picture-making technique for young readers, and concert venues where he reunited with his punk band, The Matches. The overlap was more than a scheduling puzzle. It put two parts of his working life—children’s books and music—into the same tour, with all the fatigue, awkward gear changes and unexpected connections that came with it.
The book was Duel (Holiday House/Porter), Harris’s 16th published book and the sixth he has both written and illustrated. Its release coincided with shows marking 20 years since The Matches made a record that fans still remember. The band had booked dates in six cities, and Harris’s publisher asked whether he’d combine the concerts with appearances for the book. The title practically supplied its own joke. He agreed, then began packing for a tour that demanded a guitar, cables, pedals and three dozen small bottles of tempera paint.
School visits by day, soundcheck by night
On September 11 in Chicago, Harris started at an elementary school event arranged by the Book Stall. At each school visit, he read Duel and showed students how he makes its images by pressing paint between two halves of paper. The method recalls the symmetrical butterfly paintings many children make in kindergarten, but the reveal gives the demonstration its own appeal.
Harris had to leave school and head straight to soundcheck. His guitar case drew attention from the children, who wanted to hear him play. Without an amplifier, the electric guitar’s brief riff was less impressive than the instrument itself; Harris admits the students were disappointed.
The band had little time to prepare together. Its drummer had been sick the previous week, leaving the Chicago soundcheck as the group’s only rehearsal before the show. The performance was rough around the edges, but the crowd sang along anyway. Harris recognized something familiar in that response: the band had been imperfect onstage two decades earlier, too.
After the concert, a blinking smoke alarm kept Harris awake. The next morning’s flight came after too little sleep, and he woke feeling as if he’d wrestled a crocodile. He also began to reconsider the forceful neck movements he brought to the stage. The tour was already making its physical demands clear.
A traveling life with two audiences
In Minneapolis, hotel rooms weren’t ready, so Harris took an unplanned nap in the Marriott lobby. That night’s performance went better. Some friends in the audience knew him mainly as a picture book creator and were seeing the band side of his work for the first time.
The band used an iPad to project live footage behind the musicians. When the network overloaded, the crowd got a look at Harris’s photo reel, which mostly featured his children’s book work. His bandmate took the opening to describe what everyone did away from the stage: the members were a personal trainer, a lawyer, a painter and a picture book maker.
Afterward, former fans talked with Harris about their own lives. Many were parents now; some already knew his work for children, while others were just discovering it. People left the merch table with a Duel postcard and a link to the book. Harris felt the uneasy pull between making art and selling it, then settled on a more generous description of the work: artist.
The stretches between events didn’t turn into useful work time. Harris had graphic novel deadlines waiting at home, and travel appeared to offer spare minutes in cars, airports and backstage. He tried to draw during those gaps. He couldn’t. The days were full of waiting, but the constant changes of place made it difficult to settle into the work.
San Francisco brought a different kind of split-screen moment. At noon, Harris appeared at the public library, where Let’s Be Bees had been nominated for a Northern California Book Award. It didn’t win. Harris had spent hours imagining what he’d say if it did, only to learn that the winner had already submitted a recorded acceptance speech.
He then hurried to load in at the Fillmore, where the band would headline. The venue mattered to him beyond its place in the city’s music history: as an art student, he had worked in its kitchen making nachos and turkey clubs. The bassist and drummer had worked there as servers. When business slowed during a headliner’s set, they could watch from behind the balcony curtains. Now, onstage, Harris found himself looking toward the balcony and imagining his younger self watching the show.
Duel editor Taylor Norman came to the concert with her five-year-old child, Harris’s godson. He stayed past 11 p.m. and even helped the band clear the stage. The show had drawn the book’s publishing world into a setting tied to Harris’s earlier life, with his godson helping close the night.
Paint, publishing and punk in New York
Washington, D.C., brought early school visits after a late arrival the night before. The paint demonstrations remained a fixture, and Harris’s luggage carried the supplies: guitar equipment, cables, strings and the tempera. He anticipated a washable, nontoxic mess, though he hoped the inevitable paint chaos would wait until after the events.
At Politics and Prose, Harris signed stock and met booksellers. When staff mentioned a younger colleague who liked punk, he put that person on the guest list while insisting there was no pressure to attend. He scanned the crowd during the show and didn’t spot them. Afterward, the bookseller came over to say they’d had a good time. Harris was, by his own account, embarrassingly pleased to get approval from someone in their twenties.
In New York, The Matches played the Bowery Ballroom for a guest list heavy with publishing colleagues. Harris then had little time to recover before storytime at Spiral Books. Later, he took part in an adults-only picture book event at Sullaluna, an evening built around drinks and drawing, where he met author Matthew Burgess. Harris found himself talking expansively about picture books and checking Burgess’s face for signs of agreement. Bandmates who were still in town joined the event, and the group had dinner upstairs afterward.
There was also the hair. Harris created the band’s look with volume powder, back-combing and hairspray—the same spray he uses to set chalk and charcoal drawings. Returning to his daytime appearance required shampoo and conditioner to undo the tangles. The routine made the shift between his public roles literal: one look for the concert, another for the school visit.
The New York itinerary also included a visit to Holiday House, where Harris’s book joined the publisher’s in-house chronological library. The collection holds every book the company has released since 1935, when it became the first American publisher devoted exclusively to children’s books. Harris also led staff through the paint-folding activity, reteaching adults a classroom art project many had last tried as children.
One last show, then more school visits
From October 1 to 2, Harris was in Kansas City for the first annual Lucky Rabbit Lit Fest at the Rabbit hOle. The gathering included Burgess, his Caldecott-winning illustrator Cátia Chien, Cece Bell, Nina Crews and Mark Alan Stamaty, among others. Harris singled out the Rabbit hOle’s temporary exhibit of Tomi Ungerer’s The Three Robbers, which was scheduled to be replaced at the end of the year.
The festival overlapped with the final concert, in Pomona, California. Harris left Kansas City to fly to the show and coached Norman remotely on how to demonstrate the paint technique. The arrangement was less than straightforward, and Harris joked about staging an illusion in which he appeared to bite off her head.
The Pomona concert closed the tour’s double-duty stretch. Harris celebrated with a somersault over the crowd, while his wife filmed from the side of the stage. He felt relieved at the thought of returning to more reasonable bedtimes, and wistful about how many more band anniversaries he might get to play.
There was little time to sit with that thought. Harris’s next flights would take him to Houston for school visits arranged by Blue Willow, then to the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature in Abilene, where about 70 of his original artworks were on display. More appearances were planned in Georgia, Massachusetts and Rhode Island before he returned to California.
That itinerary points to the less tidy truth behind a tour that joined concerts with a book launch: the two kinds of work don’t simply fit together because they share an artist. They demand different rooms, audiences, materials and energy. Yet Harris’s accounts of the trip suggest that the crossing can create its own moments—a punk fan meeting a picture book maker, children asking about an electric guitar, or a band’s history meeting the venue where its members once worked. For Harris, the tour’s final measure was the people who came to hear him read, hear him sing, or do both.
Harris has published 16 books for children, including his solo debut, Have You Ever Seen a Flower?, which received a Caldecott Honor.
