Shel Silverstein plays a critical role in so many young childrens’ lives… even after he’s passed. Sheldon Allan Silverstein was born in 1930 and in the 50s, started illustrating for military magazine, Stars and Stripes. Later, he turned his attention to child-centric writing, even adopting the name Uncle Shelby.

His work included Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book: A Primer for Tender Young Minds (1961) and Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros (1964). Among his memorable characters were the protagonist in Uncle Shelby’s Story of Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back (1963); the boy-man and tree in The Giving Tree (1964), his most famous prose work; and the partial circle in The Missing Piece (1976). Falling Up (1996) was the last illustrated collection published before his death in 1999. Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook (2015) and Runny Babbit Returns (2017) were released posthumously.

Brigid Darrah says her favorite and most memorable poem of Silverstein’s is Where the Sidewalk Ends, and many would agree. She recalls thinking little of it as a kid but loving it, nonetheless. It was readable, and consisted of words that she could understand even then. As she reread it in front of me today, she had only one thing to say. “I guess it is pretty deep.” The line that stood out? “For the children, they mark, and the children, they know the place where the sidewalk ends.” Darrah says that only now does that line hit home. “It feels like being left out of the club… or rather that the membership expired.”

Shel Silverstein wrote to and about children and that was his appeal. He could write things that meant something to kids and that adults could want for it to still mean to them. Silverstein often eschewed happy endings because children, he said, might otherwise wonder why they themselves were not comparably happy. He was credited for helping young readers develop an appreciation of poetry, and his serious verse reveals an understanding of common childhood anxieties and wishes.

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