Shel silverstein biography timeline examples

Some poetry connects generations together, drawing them in at an early age through fun rhymes and silly images. Shel Silverstein has become synonymous with children’s poetry, the type of poetry that sticks with its readers well into adulthood.

Most children are familiar with poet Shel Silverstein’s work and the fun pen drawings that often accompany his poems. Silverstein’s poetry has been translated into over 30 languages and sold over 20 million copies. Probably one of his best known poems is &#;Where the Sidewalk Ends,&#; which was also the name of one of his poetry collections.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, in , he began his career as a cartoonist at the age of 7 by tracing over Al Capp’s cartoons. Silverstein attended Roosevelt High School and got expelled from the University of Illinois which lead him to enroll in the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Drafted by the United States Army before completing his degree, he served in Japan and Korea.

Silverstein then studied En

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Shel Silverstein

Shel Silverstein was born on September 25, , in Chicago and began writing and drawing at a ung age. 

Silverstein is best known as the author of iconic books of prose and poetry for young readers. His works include such modern classics as A Light in the Attic (HarperCollins, ), recipient of the School Library Journal Best Books Award in ; Where the Sidewalk Ends (Harper & Row, ), a Michigan Young Readers Award winner; and The Giving Tree (Harper & Row, ). Runny Babbit (HarperCollins, ), a posthumous poetry collection of spoonerisms, was conceived and completed before his death.

A cartoonist, playwright, poet, performer, and recording artist, Silverstein was also a Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated songwriter. His books, which he also illustrated, are characterized by a deft mixing of the sly and the serious, the macabre and the silly. His unique imagination and modig brand of humor is beloved b

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Executors or Executioners?

For the last few years I’ve been writing a scholarly book about Shel Silverstein’s life and work. Yet, after five years of labor, I’ve recently come to realize that my book will very possibly never be published.

Why not? Well, certainly not because there’s a glut of other books about Silverstein. Only one popular biography exists, and I guess if you count the Shel-centric Silverstein and Me: a Memoir,by Silverstein’s lifelong friend, Marv Gold, you could up that number to two. However, these books don’t talk much about the work. A frustratingly small number of scholarly and critical studies of any type put his complex and unconventional life in conversation with his art.

And it’s not because there’s nothing to write about. Most of us know Silverstein for his children’s poetry and picture books (such as Where the Sidewalk Ends and The Giving Tree), but fewer realize he got his början writing gag strips for The Stars and Stripes while serving a