Shel Silverstein

Mariah Olson, Hannah Axtelle, Rachel Pederson, Jessica Winden

Life Outside Career

Shel Silverstein didnt like to do interviews so the information we found on the internet was pretty limited, but heres what we do know! He was born in Chicago in 1930. Friends called him an inveterate womanizer. Was a member of the U.S. Armed Forces serving in both Japan and Korea. In 1959 he was in a car accident that permanently scared him from ever getting behind the wheel again. Died of a heart attack May 9th, 1999.

His Career
Created first cartoons for Pacific Stars and Stripes. Learned to play guitar and write songs including A Boy Named Sue for Johnny Cash. One of his most popular books, The Giving Tree, was published in 1964. Recorded his own album Dirty Feet in 1968. Won the New York Times Notable Book designation in 1974 for Where the Sidewalk Ends. Earned the IRA/Childrens Choice Award in 1982 for The Missing Piece Meets the Big O. Received the George C. Stone and William Allen White awards in 1984 for A Light in the Attic. In 1984, Silverstein won a Grammy Award for Best Childrens Album for Where the Sidewalk Ends. Cowrote the soundtrack for the 1990 film Postcard From the Edge which was nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Song in 1991. He also wrote 10 plays and did various other music composition jobs but was most renowned for his writing of childrens books.

Where the Sidewalk Ends

In Shel Silversteins book Where the Sidewalk Ends, he writes many different poems as well as draws illustrations to go with most. He writes about a number of different things; from giants, to holidays, to animals, and even characters and topics that he has made up! They are happy-go-lucky poems that both children and adults can find entertaining, and can be very beneficial to their learning as well. He uses simple words in rhythmic patterns that can help students learn to read fluently. He uses rhyming words in every single poem, so children can hear the similarities in the English language. Some of his poems have a sarcastic tone, like in his poem titled Smart, found on page 35. He speaks in the tone of a young boy exchanging different coins with different people. He thinks he is earning more money as he goes, but really is not. Shels sarcasm is apparent throughout the poem, and is somewhat humorous for adults and children. A great example of repetition, rhyming, and rhythm is in his poem titled Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too. This poem is fun for parents to read to their children, and for children to read aloud to themselves, as they get older. As the book progresses, the poems seem to get longer and become more and more complicated. This being said, he still incorporates short poems throughout to keep children interested. The illustrations throughout the book are perfect for the style of poetry he writes. They seem to be drawn simply with a pen, and have a slight goofy look to them. They match his sense of humor and show the mood of the poems they go with. Some are more detailed than others, but all are in black and white. Overall the poems throughout Where the Sidewalk Ends are perfect for children and adults of all ages. While reading them for this project, the same smile was glued to my face as when I was reading them with my mom as a kid. Their witty, simplistic nature is fun and entertaining.

Teaching Ideas
Not all of Shel Silversteins poems have illustrations that go along with them. Depending on the age of the students, the teacher could choose a poem that is appropriate enough for the children to be challenged. Using the descriptive words from the poem, students can come up with their own illustrations that they feel go along with the poem, and the teacher will be able to see each students creativity! Another lesson plan for the book Where the Sidewalk Ends, could be used with the poem titled The Acrobats. First, as a class we could discuss rhyming words and how they work. The teacher would write examples of words on the board, and we could come up with lists of words that rhyme with the ones provided. We could also come up with sentences that use rhyming words, and the students would see how fun rhyming in poems could be! Next, the teacher would give each student a copy of the poem, and the students would highlight each rhyming word. Reciting the poem over and over again, the children would become comfortable with the rhyming words, and develop a fluency within the poem as a group.

Excerpt from Where The Sidewalk Ends

Summaries
Everything On It By Shel Silverstein This book is a collection of Shel Silversteins poems, like many other books he has written. Some of these poems are short (about 4 lines), where others are very long (1-2 pages). Shel Silverstein incorporates his style and, of course, humor to write each poem. Most of these poems rhyme and most of them have a black and white illustration to accompany them. This book would be good in a phonics lesson that uses rhyming words. The Giving Tree This book is one of Silversteins more popular picture books. Instead of his usual poetry compilations, this book is a story about a boy and a tree who play together when the boy is small, slowly as he grows older he asks for things from the tree to help him with his grown up life and when he comes back as an old man all he wants is to rest, the book ends with the line and the tree was happy. This book would be a good one to teach in any age classroom. It would be a good book to use in a lesson about story elements. This is a very meaningful book as well and would be a good lesson to teach children about sharing and giving back. Runny Babbit Runny Babbit is another collection of poems that Shel Silverstein has written. These poems are very unique in that, just like the title, a play with words. Each poem contains words that almost seem like gibberish but when read quickly the reader can understand what Silverstein means because they are words that have been jumbled up, just like the words Runny Babbit have been switched around from the original Bunny Rabbit. These poems are very silly to read because they sound so crazy and ridiculous. This would be a harder book to incorporate in class because it contains so many misspelled words that it would be hard to teach from it directly. A good activity would be to figure out what the words really should say and how to spell them correctly.

Summaries
A Light in the Attic A Light in the Attic is a book containing a large collection of poems. These poems are full of wild imagination and humorous stories matched with comical illustrations which are both fun to read and look at. His poems are unique because while they all rhyme, the actual rhythms are varied in each poem so that you have to read them in a certain way with different pauses than usual. I would say this book would be of great use in 3rd through 5th grade classrooms because the poems have very creative vocabulary that might be difficult to younger readers to comprehend but are intriguing and fun for older elementary readers. These poems teach children that there are a variety of ways you can write poetry and use inventive, exciting words to make the language in short stories jump out to its readers. Falling Up Falling Up is another book by Shel Silverstein that is simply a collection of many poems and illustrations to match the stories. The poems in this book are very creative because they all have unique styles and themes. For example, one poem uses many noises and adjectives to describe a series of events while another poem repeats the same line stem multiple times to get across the main idea of that particular excerpt. This book of poems would be good to use with older elementary students such as 3rd through 5th grade classrooms because the different styles of the poems gives children a larger sense of how you can really be creative and imaginative when writing your own poems. A fun, creative idea of how to use this book would be to let children use the same format as their favorite poem in the book to write their own poem but with their own themes and ideas. A Giraffe and a Half A Giraffe and a Half was a very fun book to read because it was a short story that kept adding on more and more lines to the same poem stem from the beginning. Every new page adds a new line to the poem that wasnt on the page before and an additional object is added to the illustration to show how the story is growing. Eventually the story ends up saying that the giraffe falls in a hole that was dug by a mole with all these objects on him and things going on around him and the picture Shel Silverstein created to match this one long, detailed line is so full of humorous detail that children cant help but love the story. The book would be great to use in a classroom to show students how they can always add more details to stories or take away details they decide they dont want later but in a creative manner.

Summaries
The Missing Piece The story begins with a circle and his hunt to find his missing piece. While on his journey he encounters different pieces but none of them are his. As he goes along his journey he sings a silly song about how he is looking for his missing piece. He does find his missing piece and they come together as one. There is a problem though because now that there is a piece inside of him he cannot sing like he was once able to and he rolls too quickly to appreciate things. In the end he decides to let the missing piece go and continue on with himself as a circle with a piece missing from him but he is ok with that. This could be used to teach children about the importance of being an individual. The teacher could do a me unit and have the children highlight their differences that make them unique. The Missing Piece Meets the Big O The main character is a 1/6 fraction of a circle and he is trying to find his missing piece. The character tries to fit into many different characters that are almost whole circles that are missing a fraction from them. One day a full circle comes along and the missing piece wanted to be with him, but the full circle told the missing piece that there was no room for him because he was a full circle already, but he should try to make himself a whole circle. Then the missing piece attempts to roll on his own, while doing this his edges begin to wear down transforming him into a circle and rolls away. This story could be used to teach children about goals and that they can do anything that they set their minds to. They could come up with their own goals and how they plan to achieve them.

Who Wants A Cheap Rhinoceros? This story is about a child selling a rhinoceros and it begins by naming off a few typical traits of a rhinoceros and then the story goes into all of the silly things you can use him for if you were to buy him. Silverstein was creative with coming up with so many ways that you can use a rhinoceros in everyday life and all of the fun adventures that you can have together. The very end of the story is that a rhinoceros is easy to love and you can tell that if anyone went through all of these antics together they would have to love one another. This story could be used in a classroom setting by using the book as a way to introduce students to creative writing and poetry. You could have the students select their favorite animal and write about all the nontraditional uses that animal could have.

Bio Bibliography
http://www.shelsilverstein.com/about/ Shel Silverstein 1932-1999. (1999). Publishers Weekly, 246(20), 32. A BOY NAMED SHEL: The Life and Times of Shel Silverstein. (2007). Kirkus Reviews, 75(17), 913. http://faculty.weber.edu/chansen/humanweb/ projects/MeghanUng/biography.htm Smolowe, J. M. (1999). Bard Brain. People, 51(19), 64.

Books Bibliography
Silverstein, S. (2011). Everything on it: Poems and drawings. New York: HarperCollins Children's Books. Silverstein, S. (1964). The giving tree. New York: Harper & Row. Silverstein, S. (2005). Runny Babbit: A billy sook. New York: HarperCollins. Silverstein, S. (1981). A light in the attic. New York, N.Y: Harper & Row. Silverstein, S. (1996). Falling up: Poems and drawings. New York, N.Y: HarperCollins. Silverstein, S. (1964). A giraffe and a half. S.l.: Harper & Row. Silverstein, S. (1976). The missing piece. Harper & Row. Silverstein, S. (2006). The missing piece meets the big o. Harper & Row.