photo: Larry Moyer
Shel Silverstein
Shel Silverstein was born on September 25, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois, where he was writing from the time he was a young boy. He was a composer, an artist, and the author of numerous books of prose and poetry for younger readers.
Silverstein's prose works include such modern classics as The Giving Tree (1963), Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back (1963), and The Missing Piece (1976), while his immensely popular poetry collections include Where the Sidewalk Ends, which received a Michigan Young Readers Award in 1974, A Light in the Attic, which received a School Library Journal Best Books Award in 1982, and, most recently, Falling Up (HarperCollins, 1996).
Shel Silverstein really has left a legacy and a high standard for authors to achieve. His poetry reaches out to people of all ages, never excluding anyone.The main point was that he did influence people of all ages, not just children. He influenced his readers by creating simple, understandable poems that can hold different meanings for whoever reads them. He influenced readers by writing many books and not just one, leaving people hanging for more. He influenced his readers by writing poems that pertain to everyone, writing about sports, dreaming, dancing, hoping, eating, pretty much everything you can think of, Shel Silverstein wrote about it.
Silverstein's work, which he illustrated himself, is characterized by a deft mixing of the sly and the serious, the macabre and the just plain silly. His wicked, giddy humor is beloved by countless adults as well as by children. He died in May 1999.
Picture Puzzle Pieceby Shel Silverstein published/written in 1981
One picture puzzle piece
Lyin' on the sidewalk,
One picture puzzle piece
Soakin' in the rain.
It might be a button of blue
On the coat of the woman
Who lived in a shoe.
It might be a magical bean,
Or a fold in the red
Velvet robe of a queen.
It might be the one little bite
Of the apple her stepmother
Gave to Snow White.
It might be the veil of a bride
Or a bottle with some evil genie inside.
It might be a small tuft of hair
On the big bouncy belly
Of Bobo the Bear.
It might be a bit of the cloak
Of the Witch of the West
As she melted to smoke.
It might be a shadowy trace
Of a tear that runs down an angel's face.
Nothing has more possibilities
Than one old wet picture puzzle piece.
Response Question: Write about an object (like the puzzle piece in the poem) that has an effect on your mind to relive childhood and use your hidden imagination to further expand the simple object to something even greater.