Shel Silverstein was a multi-talented artist known for his children’s books, poetry, music, and cartoons. He served in the army, worked for Playboy, and wrote the hit song “A Boy Named Sue”. His most famous works include The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends, but they have also been controversial and contested. He continued to work as a playwright, reporter, and cartoonist throughout his life until his death in 1999.
Shel Silverstein was born Sheldon Allan Silverstein on September 25, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois. He was widely known as an award-winning children’s author and illustrator, but was also a composer, folk singer, playwright, and prolific novelist and poet. His best known works are The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic and Falling Up.
Shel Silverstein grew up in a relatively poor area of Chicago and quickly developed an interest in writing and drawing. Lui attended the University of Illinois for one year as an art student before attending the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In September 1953 he was drafted into the army and served in Korea and Japan. While there, he worked as a cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, a US military publication.
As a civilian in 1956, Shel Silverstein took another job as a cartoonist, this time with Playboy magazine. There he continued to draw many cartoons and write many articles, his first being “Confessions of a Button Down Man”. During this time, he also became known as a songwriter. Johnny Cash made the song “A Boy Named Sue”, written by Silverstein, number one in 1969.
While Shel Silverstein had many talents, his best known works are children’s books. In 1963 she wrote and illustrated his successful children’s debut, The Story of Uncle Shelsu Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back. It was The Giving Tree, written in 1964, however, that made Shel Silverstein a household name. The simple story of a tree that gives and a boy that takes held great appeal to both children and adults. The Giving Tree hasn’t been without controversy, however, as he’s simple premise opens up to a wide variety of interpretations. Some of these interpretations claim that the book has religious implications, for example, while others accuse it of being antifeminist.
Once an author creates a book that causes so much controversy, the same will surely follow in subsequent works. This was true with Where the Sidewalk Ends: Poems and Drawings (1974), The Missing Piece (1976) and The Missing Piece Meets The Big O (1981), which continued to generate critical praise while sustaining the popularity of Shel Silverstein and of his work. The controversy has sometimes also led to the banning and contestation of his books in schools and libraries. A Light In the Attic, originally released in 1981, is most famous for this, having been contested for allegedly “promoting disrespect, horror and violence.” The book made the American Library Association’s (ALA) list of the “100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000.”
In addition to writing his immensely popular children’s books, Shel Silverstein was known as a Renaissance man. He wrote and helped write several plays, most notably The Lady Or The Tiger Show (1981) and the screenplay for the film Things Change (1988). He wrote and composed music and lyrics for many artists and released his own country album, The Great Conch Train Robbery, in 1980. Throughout his life he also continued to work as a reporter and cartoonist.
Shel Silverstein published another acclaimed book of poetry and drawings, Falling Up, in 1996, three years before her death. He died on May 10, 1999 in Key West, Florida, leaving his estate to his son Matthew. Runny Babbit: To Billy Sook was released following his death in 2005, again to critical acclaim.
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