Author Talk & Book Talk By:

Blanca Dimas

• "I know a way to stay friends forever, There's really nothing to it, I tell you what to do, And you

do it.“-Shel Silverstein

Shel Silverstein was a(n)…

• American poet• singer-songwriter• musician• composer• cartoonist• screenwriter• author of children's books

Biography

✎Sheldon Allan Silverstein was born in Chicago, Illinois on September 25, 1930

✎Began tracing works of Al Capp by age 12✎Graduated from Theodore Roosevelt H.S. ✎First cartoons for adults when he was a GI in

Japan and Korea in 1950s✎His first children’s book, Lafcadio, the Lion

Who Shot Back, was published in 1963

Biography Con't.

• Harper Collins’ editor Ursula Nordstrom published The Giving Tree in 1964

• First collection of poems, Where the Sidewalk Ends, published in 1974

• Last book published before his death in 1999 was Falling Up in 1996

• Shel Silverstein’s Website– http://www.shelsilverstein.com/indexSite.

html

Awards• Where the Sidewalk Ends was a 1974 Michigan Young

Readers Award winner• A Light in the Attic, recipient of the School Library

Journal Best Books Award in 1982• In 1984, Silverstein won a Grammy Award for Best

Children’s Album for Where the Sidewalk Ends – “recited, sung and shouted” by the author.

• “A Boy Named Sue” won a Grammy Award in 1970• He was awarded the 1983 Joseph Jefferson Award for

New Work for "Gorilla" at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.

• He co-wrote with Baxter Taylor "Marie Laveau", for which the songwriters received a 1975 BMI Award.

• Posthumously inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002

His Works

Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the AtticPublished byHarperCollinsIn 1981

• "I will not play tug o' war. I'd rather play hug o' war. Where everyone

hugs instead of tugs, Where everyone giggles and rolls on the rug, Where everyone kisses, and

everyone grins, and everyone cuddles, and everyone wins.“

-Shel Silverstein

Interesting Facts• A Light in the Attic stayed on the New York Times

Bestseller List for a record-breaking 182 weeks (first children’s book ever)

• Learned guitar and wrote “A Boy Named Sue” for Johnny Cash in 1969

• Accomplished playwright—”The Trio”, the 1981 hit “The Lady or the Tiger Show”, “Oh, Hell!”, and 1988 film “Things Change”

• Worked with Pat Dailey on Underwater Land (2002)• Runny Babbit was released in March 2005, first

posthumous publication• On September 20, 2011 Every Thing On It was

released• Wrote more than 100 one-act plays