News

Springfield, Missouri based children’s author and poet David Harrison is celebrating quite the milestone this year:  October 1, 2019 will mark 50 years since his first book, The Boy With a Drum, was published. KSMU's Jennifer Moore  sat down with Harrison to talk about those 50 years, and began by asking him to describe the moment he first learned he was going to be published.

You can hear the extended interview by clicking the "Play" icon below.

Back to school checklists typically include pencils, calculators, and lunch boxes. But according to the Child Advocacy Center in Springfield, there’s another list parents need to help protect their children. It focuses on communicating and awareness to prevent sexual abuse of children.

As children start a new school year, they come into contact with new adults and new routines.

Linda Saturno is executive director of the CAC. She says parents should be familiar with the school’s Code of Conduct policy.

Mansfield, Missouri native Michael Spyres is an internationally renowned tenor—he’s back (briefly!) in Springfield for a week following a production of Vincent D'Indy's epic opera “Fervaal” with the Radio France Music Festival in Montpellier.  Recently he was named Artist of the Year by The Professional Critics Syndicate of France, and he’ll make his Metropolitan Opera debut this season in the title role of Berlioz’s “La Damnation de Faust.” But Spyres “grew up” musically with Springfield Regional Opera, of which he is now Artistic Director.

Dickerson Park Zoo rescued five young barn owls earlier this summer, and, Thursday, the Missouri Department of Conservation took them to their new homes in rural parts of southwest Missouri.

MDC initially took the owlets from a location in Lawrence County after it received a call from a landowner and sent an agent to check on the birds.