Shel Silverstein
Shel Silverstein was a versatile American author, poet, cartoonist, and songwriter, celebrated for his engaging work across multiple genres. He gained initial fame in the 1950s for his witty cartoons in Playboy magazine and later transitioned into children's literature, producing beloved poetry collections beginning in the early 1960s. Among his most notable works are "Where the Sidewalk Ends," "A Light in the Attic," and "Falling Up," which feature imaginative characters and whimsical themes that resonate with both children and adults. Silverstein's unique storytelling style, often characterized by humor and clever wordplay, has made his poetry memorable and accessible, encouraging children to explore language and imagination.
In addition to his literary contributions, Silverstein made significant impacts in music, composing hit songs for well-known artists and earning multiple Grammy Awards. His creative endeavors also included writing plays and film scores, showcasing his multifaceted talent. His work has been recognized with various honors, affirming his influence in children's literature and music. Despite a career that spanned several decades and diverse artistic forms, Silverstein's legacy endures through the playful, thought-provoking nature of his writing and art, continuing to delight generations of readers.
Shel Silverstein
Cartoonist
- Born: September 25, 1930 or 1932
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Died: May 8, 1999
- Place of death: Key West, Florida
Other literary forms
The multitalented Shel Silverstein was known for his work in several genres. In addition to his popular, best-selling children’s poetry collections, he was recognized for humorous cartoons and drawings for adults and youth, comedic plays, illustrated juvenile stories, award-winning musical compositions, lyrics for pop and rock tunes (many of which he recorded), and film scores.
Achievements
The bearded, shaved-headed Shel Silverstein first attracted national notice in the mid-1950’s for his clever, bawdy cartoons in Playboy magazine, which were published in collections during the 1960’s. He added songwriting to his repertoire in the late 1950’s, recording several albums. Through the encouragement of an editor, he entered the juvenile market, beginning in 1963 with a pair of self-illustrated children’s tales, and the following year, he published the first of a half-dozen collections of poems for children featuring his humorous drawings. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Silverstein penned the music and lyrics for several hits recorded by the likes of Dr. Hook and Johnny Cash, and his songs were heard in the films Ned Kelly (1970) and Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971).
Throughout the 1980’s, while Silverstein continued to publish prose and poetry works for juveniles, he also wrote short plays and dramatic sketches, most of which were produced in New York City. For his efforts in the juvenile arena, Silverstein received such honors as the William Allen White Award, the Garden State Children’s Book Award, School Library Journal Best Book Award, and the Buckeye Children’s Book Award. He won a Grammy Award as composer of “A Boy Named Sue” in 1970 and received a second in 1984 for his recording of Where the Sidewalk Ends. He also earned a BMI Award in 1975 and was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe as composer of “I’m Checkin’ Out,” featured in the 1990 film Postcards from the Edge. In 2002, he was inducted posthumously into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Biography
The son of Nathan Silverstein and Helen Silverstein, Sheldon Alan Silverstein grew up with a sister, Peggy, in Chicago. Lacking in the usual social skills—academic excellence, athletic prowess, or the ability to dance—he was a loner at Roosevelt High School, where he began to draw and write, and independently developed his own unique style. After graduation, he briefly attended the University of Illinois and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts before enrolling at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1953, Silverstein served overseas in Japan and Korea, where he learned to play guitar, write songs, and sing, and where he was employed drawing cartoons for the military publication Pacific Stars and Stripes. After leaving the service in the mid-1950’s, he returned to Chicago, where he contributed cartoons to Look, Sports Illustrated, and other periodicals, especially Playboy magazine, where his work appeared frequently for more than forty years.
In the late 1950’s, Silverstein began writing, playing, and recording music. His first album, Hairy Jazz (1959), included several original songs and his interpretations of jazz standards. He followed up with several additional albums of original music, and his novelty songs—including “The Unicorn,” “Boa Constrictor,” and “Yes, Mr. Rogers”—were covered by such artists as the Irish Rovers, Dr. Hook, and Bobby Bare.
Silverstein entered the children’s literary market in 1963 with the publication of Uncle Shelby’s Story of Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back, which featured his eloquent drawings. He quickly capitalized on the modest success of his first effort with another juvenile prose work, The Giving Tree (1964), and the same year, he published his first book of verse for children, Uncle Shelby’s Giraffe and a Half. Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s, Silverstein continued producing children’s stories and poems, cartoons for adult markets, and music that he or others recorded. In the 1980’s, he primarily concentrated on drama, writing a number of short adult plays—such as The Lady or the Tiger Show (pr. 1981), Wild Life (pr. 1983), The Happy Hour (pr. 1985), Wash and Dry (pr. 1986), and The Devil and Billy Markham (pr. 1989)—and collaborated with playwright-director David Mamet on the screenplay of the film Things Change (1988). Late in life, Silverstein returned to writing poetry for adults and children.
Silverstein had a daughter, Shoshanna, with Susan Hastings, in 1970. After Hastings’s death in 1975, the girl went to live with grandparents; she died at the age of eleven of a brain aneurysm. In 1983, he had a son, Matt, with Sarah Spencer. Silverstein died of a heart attack in Key West, Florida, probably on May 8, 1999, though his body was not discovered for two days. He was sixty-eight years old.
Analysis
Whether creating cartoons for adults, composing songs, writing plays, or devising poems and accompanying illustrations for children, Shel Silverstein demonstrated keen observational skills, wicked, subversive wit, a fondness for wordplay, and an uncanny ability to make his audiences think about a wide range of subjects. Silverstein’s popular songs—such as “The Cover of the Rolling Stone,” “A Boy Named Sue,” “The Unicorn” and “Sylvia’s Mother”—will probably be heard for years to come. His award-winning poetry and drawings for children (which have been favorably compared to the works of Roald Dahl, Edward Lear, Dr. Seuss, and Maurice Sendak, among others) will undoubtedly be read, recited, and enjoyed as they engage the imagination of generations of youngsters and their parents.
Certainly, by classical standards—such as those established by Robert Louis Stevenson in A Child’s Garden of Verses (1895) or by A. A. Milne in When We Were Very Young (1924)—Silverstein’s poetry is flawed, bordering on doggerel. His rhyme schemes are often haphazard and irregular, and the poems do not always scan well. His verses are filled with slang, and the author has a tendency to drop the final g in gerunds in an effort to impart folksiness. Silverstein’s rhymes are sometimes forced; he employs slant rhyme with impunity. He sometimes deals with topics (like nose picking) that can make adults uncomfortable.
However, since children generally care little for poetic technicalities, the positive aspects of Silverstein’s poems greatly outweigh the negative. The poet is a natural storyteller with the ability to capture a complete thought or tell a full tale—containing a beginning, middle, and an end—with concision. The majority of his children’s verse is short, up to twelve lines, and stanzas frequently repeat a theme or reiterate a key concept so that the poems are easy and fun to memorize. It is not difficult to imagine young boys or girls and their parents breaking into laughter while reading the verses. Silverstein introduces memorable characters or creatures with peculiar-sounding names and distinctive traits that are used humorously as examples in imparting advice. Though the poems are typically silly or nonsensical, dealing alternately with real-life events or fantasies, they often have a humorous twist that gives them extra depth and substance. Best of all are Silverstein’s charming illustrations that complement his words and aid in a child’s learning process.
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Published in 1974, excerpts of Where the Sidewalk Ends were released on audiocassette in 1983 (with the poet reciting, singing, and performing the selections). This album won a Grammy Award for best children’s recording. A twenty-fifth anniversary compact disc of this recording, supplemented by some new material, was released in 2000, illustrating the timeless popularity of the work, which originally won an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book Award, a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year Award, and other honors. In addition to the evocative title poem, Where the Sidewalk Ends contains more than 120 poems, among them such perennial children’s illustrated favorites as “Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too,” “It’s Dark in Here” (in which the narrator is writing from inside a lion), “Boa Constrictor” (the narrator is being slowly swallowed by the snake), “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out,” “The Unicorn” (which explains why there are none of the mythical creatures around today), “The Bagpipe Who Didn’t Say No” (the object of affection for a turtle), and the delightfully preposterous “Recipe for a Hippopotamus Sandwich.”
A Light in the Attic
Silverstein’s first new collection of children’s poems and drawings after a long hiatus, the multiple award-winner A Light in the Attic, proved he had not lost his touch during the layoff. Once again, the author dealt in whimsical fashion with a wide range of topics of interest to the young. Included are pieces concerning real (“Bear in There”) and mythical (“The Dragon of Grindly Grun”) beasts, rhyming stories of strange characters (“Backward Bill,” “Twistable, Turnable Man,” “Cloony the Clown”), wry observations (“Hammock,” “Picture Puzzle Piece,” “Reflection”), bits of useful advice (“How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes,” “Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony”), and just plain silliness (“Shaking,” “Rhino Pen”). In one of the most poignant poems, “The Little Boy and the Old Man,” the two title characters commiserate about behaviors—wetting their pants, crying, and being ignored—that they share in common.
Falling Up
Falling Up, the last collection of children’s poems published during Silverstein’s lifetime and dedicated to his son, Matt, is perhaps the author’s strongest effort in the genre. All the expected touches are here—explorations of characters, real and imaginary (notably “Allison Beals and Her Twenty-five Eels” and “Medusa”), animal stories, examinations of typical childhood activities, outrageous puns, and playful excursions into the quirks of language (such as “The Gnome, the Gnat and the Gnu”)—and each is illustrated in the author’s inimitable style. Especially memorable in Falling Up are poems that demonstrate how to count (“The Monkey”), use rhyme creatively (“Pinocchio”), present thought-provoking ideas (as in “Warmhearted,” in which a fashionable animal rights activist wears a real live fox), or gently chide preconceived notions (such as “Strange Restaurant,” wherein an eatery’s personnel are all cows, chickens, fish, or vegetables, making ordering food impossible without offending someone).
Bibliography
Gold, Marv. Silverstein and Me: A Memoir. Granada Hills, Calif.: Red Hen Press, 2009. A fond reminiscence of Silverstein’s life and work written by a lifelong friend and a fellow cartoonist, with an emphasis on how his early work for Playboy shaped his later career.
Huck, Charlotte S., and Barbara Zulandt Kiefer, eds. Children’s Literature in the Elementary School. Hightstown, N.J.: McGraw-Hill, 2003. A text for teachers of elementary and junior high school students that explores aspects of how to instill in children a lifelong love in reading through the use of picture books and poetry; includes works by Silverstein as illustrations of dynamic children’s literature.
Leonard, Hal. All Music Guide to Country: The Definitive Guide to Country Music. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2003. A collection of informative biographies and essays about the growth of country music; includes a section on Silverstein’s contributions to the genre.
Pitt, Jeannie. Hugs and Popsicles: A Cure for the Imagine-Nation. Illustrated by Stephen M. Phillips II. Scotts Valley, Calif.: CreateSpace, 2009. A collection of poems for children and the adults who raise them, this book includes a number of Silverstein’s poems, selected because they illustrate the importance of using one’s imagination.
Rogak, Lisa. A Boy Named Shel: The Life and Times of Shel Silverstein. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2009. A new biography of the energetic, well-liked but reclusive multitalented Silverstein, based on original research and interviews with those who knew him best.
Rosow, La Vergne. Light ’n’ Lively Reads for ESL, Adult, and Teen Readers: A Thematic Bibliography. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited, 1996. Alisting of resources for teachers and parents of English-as-a-second-language students and reluctant readers, featuring a generous selection of Silverstein’s poetical works, complete with detailed indexes.