If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fireįor we have some flax-golden tales to spin. It opens with this Invitation:Ī hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer. Shel’s second collection of poems and drawings, Where the Sidewalk Ends, was published in 1974. Shel combined his unique imagination and bold brand of humor in this collection of silly and scary creatures. The fourth book in 1964 was Uncle Shelby’s Zoo: Don’t Bump the Glump! and Other Fantasies, Shel’s only book illustrated in full color. Is how it starts, and the laughter builds to the most riotous ending possible. You don’t have to laugh it up even if most of my stuff is humorous.” Shel returned to humor that same year with Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros? and A Giraffe and a Half She even let him keep the sad ending, Shel remembered, “because life, you know, has pretty sad endings.
It took Shel four years before Ursula Nordstrom, the legendary Harper & Row editor, decided to publish it. Others felt that the book fell between adult and children’s literature and wouldn’t be popular. one publisher said it was too short.” Some thought it was too sad. “Everybody loved it, they were touched by it, they would read it and cry and say it was beautiful. In an interview published in the Chicago Tribune in 1964, Shel talked about the difficult time he had trying to get the book published. The first, The Giving Tree, is a moving story about the love of a tree for a boy. It was followed the next year by four new books. It’s funny and sad and has made readers laugh and think ever since it was published in 1963. a story about a very strange lion-in fact, the strangest lion I have ever met.” So begins Shel Silverstein’s very first children’s book, Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.“And now. © 2010 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. Kids and grown-ups will find Shel Silverstein’s poems “funny-ish cool.” (I made that up by myself.)ĭisclosure: My copies of A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends were gifts. In “The Loser,” instead of sitting on a rock, he’s sitting on his head. I love the pictures just as much as the poems because they go together. (from Where the Sidewalk Ends, pages 28-29)Īnd rest for just a minute… (from Where the Sidewalk Ends, page 25) He watched till his eyes were frozen wide,Īnd two knobs saying “VERT.” and “HORIZ.”Īnd he grew a plug that looked like a tail (from A Light in the Attic, page 86)įrom “The Early Show” to “The Late Late Show” I love his poems because they are hilarious and fun to read out loud.
Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) was a cartoonist and poet known for his children’s books, like The Giving Tree, A Light in the Attic, and Where the Sidewalk Ends.
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