Where The Sidewalk Ends

By (author) Silverstein Shel
Short description/annotation:
A collection of poems and drawings that feature a boy who turns into a TV set, and a girl who eats a whale, a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and crocodiles go to the dentist.
Description:

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer,
A wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er,
A magic bean buyer . . .

Come in . . . for where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein''s world begins. You''ll meet a boy who turns into a TV set, and a girl who eats a whale. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and crocodiles go to the dentist.

Shel Silverstein''s masterful collection of poems and drawings is at once outrageously funny and profound.

Biographical note:
Shel Silverstein''s very first children''s book Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back was published in 1963, and followed the next year by two other books. The first of those, The Giving Tree, is a moving story about the love of a tree for a boy; it took four years before Harper Children''s books decided to publish it. Shel returned to humour that same year with A Giraffe and a Half. His first collection of poems and drawings, Where the Sidewalk Ends, appeared in 1974, and his second, A Light in the Attic, in 1981. When he was a G.I. in Japan and Korea in the 1950, he learned to play the guitar and to write songs, including ''A Boy Named Sue'' for Johnny Cash. In 1984, Silverstein won a Grammy Award for Best Children''s Album for Where the Sidewalk Ends - ''recited, sung and shouted'' by the author. He was also an accomplished playwright, including the 1981 hit, ''The Lady or the Tiger Show.'' The last book to be published before he died in 1999, was Falling Up (1996).