Upon returning to the U.S., he broke into magazines with cartoons and was eventually pushed to pursue poetry by his editor at Harper & Row.
Silverstein was born and spent his early years in Chicago. He attended a semester at University of Illinois before being drafted into the Army and going to Korea and Japan. Upon returning to the U.S., he broke into magazines with cartoons and was eventually pushed to pursue poetry by his editor at Harper & Row. His books, including The Giving Tree, have millions of copies, and some of his best-known poems include “Homework Machine,” “Falling Up,” “Sick” and “For Sale.” You can read Shel Silverstein’s work in the books Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic and Falling Up, available from publisher HarperCollins.