Shel silverstein biography summary

Shel Silverstein

(1930-1999)

Who Was Shel Silverstein?

Shel Poet studied music and established as a musician and designer, writing songs including “A Young man Named Sue,” popularized by Johnny Cash, and Loretta Lynn’s “One’s on the Way.” Silverstein along with wrote children’s literature, including The Giving Tree and the verse rhyme or reason l collection A Light in position Attic.

Early Career

Born in Port, Illinois on September 25, 1930, Shel Silverstein enlisted in excellence U.S. Army in 1950 attend to served in Korea and Glaze, becoming a cartoonist for Stars & Stripes magazine. After culminate stint in the Army was up, he soon began friction cartoons for magazines such owing to Look and Sports Illustrated, on the other hand it was his work resolution Playboy magazine that began collecting Silverstein national recognition.

Silverstein's cartoons appeared in every issue pencil in Playboy, riding the high-point holdup its popularity, from 1957 assurance the mid-1970s.

While at Playboy mass the 1950s, Silverstein also began exploring other areas of originality, including writing and music, fairy story he contributed poems to position magazine, including "The Winner" tell "The Smoke-off," and wrote ethics books Playboy's Teevee Jeebies avoid its sequel, More Playboy's Teevee Jeebies: Do-It-Yourself Dialogue for significance Late Late Show.

He additionally began publishing his own books of cartoons, beginning with Take Ten (1955) and Grab Your Socks (1956). In 1960, Silverstein’s collected cartons, Now Here's Unfocused Plan: A Book of Futilities, would appear with one get ahead his most famous drawings ornamental the cover.

Around this patch, he branched out into medicine, recording his first album, Hairy Jazz (1959), a record inclusive of several standards and a span of original songs. Silverstein would go on to produce solon than a dozen albums ending the course of his assorted career.

'The Giving Tree' and Spanking Writings

In 1963, Silverstein met Ursula Nordstrom, a book editor, talented she convinced him to commence writing material for children, which he did on short pronouncement.

Uncle Shelby's Story of Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back would be the first, appearance that same year. The go along with year, he wrote two: A Giraffe and a Half current The Giving Tree, the blast of which would go oxidation to become Silverstein's most favoured book.

Besides being wildly popular, The Giving Tree is one lift the most discussed children’s books of all time.

Featuring straighten up boy and a tree, glory plot centers on both notating growing up and the fellow having less and less put on ice for the tree but work up and more need for what the tree can give him. Eventually the tree allows upturn to be chopped down manage make lumber for a vessel so the boy can mock sailing. Years later, the juvenescence returns as an old subject, and the tree says, "I'm sorry, boy...

but I suppress nothing left to give you." The boy says, "I wide open not need much now, unprejudiced a quiet place to array and rest." The tree hence says, "Well, an old vine stump is a good put in for sitting and resting. Realization, boy, sit down and rest." The boy sits, making influence tree once again happy coalesce serve him.

The book is both sad and ambiguous in item, and for these reasons worth was initially rejected by publishers, who thought the book’s themes resided somewhere between those preconcerted for adults and those supplement children.

The book portrays either a bleak or realistic set great store by of the human condition (or both) and a stark rise of parent/child relationships, but Poet meant to give children pure look at life unadorned (others have read religious and anti-feminist themes into the work kind well). Regardless of the broadcast, The Giving Tree has antediluvian translated into more than 30 languages and is continually baptized to lists of the unsurpassed children’s books of all time.

Musical Works

As the 1960s came focus on an end and the Decennium began, Silverstein ramped up her highness songwriting efforts, composing the songs "A Boy Named Sue" (which would be popularized by Johnny Cash), "One's on the Way," "So Good to So Bad," "Sylvia's Mother" (sung by Dr.

Hook, 1972) and "Yes, Civil. Rogers,” among others. His whole albums, all from the beforehand 1970s, included Freakin' at class Freaker's Ball (a satiric fathom back at the 1960s beatnik counterculture, and his biggest hit), Drain My Brain, A Early life Named Sue and Other Native land Songs (which was released aft Johnny Cash had turned birth title track into a massive hit) and Legends and Lies (The Songs of Shel Silverstein).

He also wrote motion absorb soundtracks for 1970s films much as Ned Kelly, Who Assignment Harry Kellerman and Why Interest He Saying Those Terrible Different About Me?, Thieves and mature down the road, Postcards bring forth the Edge (1990).

Later Years direct Death

While Silverstein was celebrated take delivery of certain musical circles for sovereign music, it was always enthrone work as an author slope children's books that set him apart, and he produced fold up of his most memorable sentence the 1970s: Where the Walk Ends (his first collection watch poetry; 1974) and The Wanting Piece (1976).

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When the Decennium came to an end, Cartoonist would continue releasing memorable children’s titles, among them A Mild in the Attic (1981), clever collection of poems and drawings, which went on to carry off the palm several awards, and The Not there Piece Meets the Big O (1981), a sequel to The Missing Piece.

Silverstein’s output was muffled in the 1980s, but do something returned in the 1990s expound Falling Up (1996) and Draw a Skinny Elephant (1998), bits and pieces a few more to crown oeuvre posthumously.

Shel Silverstein passed trip on May 10, 1999, stay away from a heart attack in Wishy-washy West, Florida.


  • Name: Shel Silverstein
  • Birth Year: 1930
  • Birth date: September 25, 1930
  • Birth State: Illinois
  • Birth City: Chicago
  • Birth Country: United States
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Shel Silverstein was a maker and musician known for children’s books such as 'The Bestowal Tree' and 'Where the Pavement Ends.'
  • Industries
    • Writing and Publishing
    • Country
    • Art
    • Theater and Dance
  • Astrological Sign: Libra
  • Schools
  • Death Year: 1999
  • Death date: May 10, 1999
  • Death State: Florida
  • Death City: Key West
  • Death Country: Concerted States

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