American children's author Shel Silverstein dies - May 10th, 1999

On this day in 1999, beloved children’s author Shel Silverstein died of a heart attack at his home in Key West, Florida. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that flips through the pages of history to deliver
old news in a new way. I'm Gabe Lucier, and
in this episode, we're talking about the life and death
of one of the most celebrated and most controversial children's
authors of the twentieth century. The day was May tenth,

(00:40):
nineteen ninety nine. Beloved children's author Shelle Silverstein died of
a heart attack at his home in Key West, Florida.
He was sixty seven years old and was survived by
his son, Matthew. Most people remember Shelle Silverstein for his
tongue twisting poetry, whimsical, bittersweet stories, and for the charming

(01:01):
line drawings that accompanied them, all of which he drew himself.
Many of Shell's children's books, including The Giving Tree, A
Light in the Attic, and Falling Up, have become staples
of millions of personal libraries, those of both kids and adults, Because,
as anyone who's read his work knows, Shell Silverstein was

(01:22):
not your typical children's author. His poetry was a unique
mix of joyful absurdism, gross out humor, macabre twists and
sincere reflections. The result were musical verses that, while simple inform,
were deeply satisfying to hear, read, and to think about.
Since he is best known for his children's work, longtime

(01:44):
readers may be surprised to learn that Shell actually had
a long and varied career outside the genre. He was
a long time cartoonist for Playboy magazine, the author of
nine stage plays for adults, and even a semi successful
folk say during the nineteen sixties. But there are some
unifying threads between all his various works. Those include his dark,

(02:08):
gleeful sense of humor, his knack for ridiculing figures of authority,
and his promotion of personal empowerment. Sheldon Alan Silverstein was
born into a Jewish middle class family in Chicago, Illinois,
on September twenty fifth, nineteen thirty. Details of his early
life are largely unknown, beyond that as an adult, Silverstein

(02:29):
valued his privacy and never spoke at length about his
personal life or his childhood. One thing we do know
for sure about the young Shell Silverstein is that he
never intended to be a writer. His original aspiration was
to be a baseball player, a ladies man or preferably both.
In a rare nineteen seventy five interview with Publishers Weekly,

(02:51):
Silverstein recounted the death of that dream and how it
set him on the path to becoming an author and illustrator.
When I was a kid, he said, twelve to fourteen
around there, I would much rather have been a good
baseball player or a hit with the girls. But I
couldn't play ball, I couldn't dance. Luckily the girls didn't
want me. Not much I could do about that, so

(03:13):
I started to draw and to write. By the time
I got to where I was attracting girls, I was
already into work, and it was more important to me.
Silverstein may not have had the skills to be a
pro athlete, but he did spend five years working at
the Cubs in White Sox stadiums in Chicago. True, he
was a concessions vendor, paying his way through college, but

(03:35):
the job still gave him some valuable life lessons just
the same. For example, when a reporter later asked the
author what he had learned about people from his time
as a hot dog vendor, Silverstein replied, quote, I learned
they like mustard and they like a hot bun. Did
you know that if you steamed the bun first, they'll
really like it? Shell sold a lot of hot dogs

(03:57):
during his college years, but he never did did get
his degree. First, he attended the University of Illinois, but
was quickly kicked out due to his bad grades. Next,
he tried the Art Institute of Chicago, but wound up
dropping out after about a year. Lastly, he enrolled at
Chicago's Roosevelt University, where he studied English for a full

(04:18):
three years. His time at the school proved formative, as
it was there that Shell first started writing and cartooning
for the student paper. His flare for flaunting authority and
social norms was there even in his earliest work. For instance,
the first cartoon he ever published showed a naked student
smoking a cigarette in front of an angry professor. The

(04:39):
caption read, what do you mean no smoking? I thought
this was a liberal school. Before he had a chance
to finish his studies at Roosevelt, Shell was drafted into
the US Army in nineteen fifty three and sent to
fight in the Korean War. The grim experience likely colored
his often dark view of the world, but unexpectedly, it

(05:00):
also gave him the chance to earn his first art
related paycheck. During his tour of duty, Shell worked as
a cartoonist for the Pacific edition of the US military's
newspaper Stars and Stripes. But don't think he toned down
his style for Uncle Sam. On the contrary, one of
his cartoons almost got him court martialed. Apparently it implied

(05:21):
that officers were addressing their families in stolen uniforms, and
the higher ups didn't find it very funny. In the end,
Shell narrowly avoided the court martial by agreeing that his
future strips would only lampoon civilians and animals, not his
fellow soldiers. After being discharged from the Armed Forces in
nineteen fifty five, Silverstein's publishing career really began to take shape.

(05:46):
He returned to Chicago and started working as a freelance cartoonist.
It went smoothly for a while, with him landing gigs
at magazines such as Sports, Illustrated, This Week, and Look.
The only downside was Shell didn't get much exposure from
those jobs, and none of them were steady work. However,
in nineteen fifty seven, Shell caught his big break when

(06:08):
he scored the job of resident cartoonist for Playboy, the
new adults only magazine had premiered just two years earlier,
allowing him to get in on the ground floor of
the operation. It wasn't just some short lived stint, either.
Shell Silverstein's cartoons appeared in every issue of Playboy from
nineteen fifty seven all the way through the mid nineteen seventies. However,

(06:32):
that wasn't the only work of his that Playboy published.
In nineteen sixty one, the adult magazine published an excerpt
from a mock children's book that he'd been working on,
called Uncle Shelby's ab z Book, A Primer for Tender
Young Minds. Soon after the abridged version appeared in Playboy,
Shell actually published it separately as his very first book.

(06:56):
As you probably guessed, it wasn't really a kid's book.
It was men as a satirical spin on children's alphabet books,
the kind where each page gives you a letter, an illustration,
and a handy mnemonic to help kids learn each letter
and how it's used. Of course, teaching the alphabet wasn't
quite the goal in Uncle Shelby's case. Instead, his book

(07:17):
used associations that targeted the insecurities and gullibility of children,
playfully spurring them on into all kinds of mischief. For example,
the entry for e encouraged kids to hurl eggs at
the ceiling in order to feed the magic genie Ernie
who lived there. Another much darker entry advised kids to

(07:37):
pretend to drink Lye the next time they were craving
a piece of candy, because after the doctor pumps their stomach,
they'd be given quote, a nice red lollipop. Black humor aside,
the book was all in good fun and clearly was
never meant for kids in the slightest. However, it seems
that at least a few parents bought their kids a
copy by mistake, because from nineteen eighty five onward, the

(08:01):
print edition of Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book has included a
stamp right on the front cover that says a primer
for adults only. What's interesting is how well the tongue
in cheek book reflected the author's view of children's literature.
It's no secret that he disliked the way other authors
condescended to their young audience. Shell sometimes spoke out about

(08:23):
society's tendency to tone down the scarier elements of classic
fairy tales in order to make the stories fluffier and
more kid friendly. His distaste for that kind of overbearing
self censorship clearly informed his ABZ book, but ultimately he
realized that the best way to push against the stifling
status quo of children's books was to write one himself.

(08:47):
According to Shell, it was a friend and fellow illustrator
named Tomi Ungerer who convinced him to give it a try,
and by convinced, I really mean forced, because the author
later said that unger quote practically dragged me kicking and
screaming into editor Ursula Nordstrom's office, and Nordstrom convinced me

(09:08):
that Tony was right. I could do children's books. With
that validation, Shell Silverstein made the bold move to stick
with the Uncle Shelby persona he had created for his
playboy work. He called his new book Uncle Shelby's Story
of Lufcadio The Lion Who Shot Back. It was an
appropriately twisted tale about a marshmallow loving lion who becomes

(09:31):
a famous marksman and has a bit of an identity
crisis in the process. You know, standard kids stuff. Laugh
CaTiO is one of Shell Silverstein's lesser known works, but
he quickly followed it up with perhaps his most famous,
The Giving Tree. He wrote it in nineteen sixty, one,
year after his first book, and then moved right along

(09:52):
to a third title called A Giraffe and a Half.
But while Shell's story of a generous apple Tree would
eventually become one of his defining works, at the time
it was written, no publisher would touch it. If you're
familiar with the story, you likely know why that's the case.
The Giving Tree is not a very happy story. In fact,

(10:13):
it's downright sad in some places, and if it has
a moral lesson to impart, it's a pretty ambiguous one.
That sense of uncertainty was in keeping with the author's
mission to be a new, more honest kind of children's author,
one who didn't talk down to child readers or sugarcoat
the world for them. Instead, Shell wanted to bridge the

(10:34):
gap between adult and children's writing, But from the publisher's perspective,
the Giving Tree was stuck somewhere in the middle of
that bridge. For example, one editor of Simon and Schuster
rejected the book, saying, quote, it's not a kid's book.
Too sad, and it isn't for adults either, too simple.
Another editor was even more direct in his response, which

(10:56):
simply said that tree is sick rot. It took some time,
but HarperCollins eventually came around publishing The Giving Tree in
nineteen sixty four. The author definitely got the last laugh
on that one. Fast forward to today, and the book
has become one of the all time children's classics. Not
only is it sold over ten million copies, it's also

(11:19):
been translated into no less than thirty different languages, which
isn't too shabby for a story about a sick, neurotic
apple tree not wanting to be Pigeonholed. By the success
of The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein continued as a traveling
reporter and cartoonist for Playboy magazine. In addition to writing
and drawing many more successful children's books, he also tried

(11:41):
out new mediums as well, including that of folk music.
Between nineteen fifty nine in the mid nineteen seventies, Shell
actually enjoyed a pretty successful music career, though not so
much as a singer. His voice was deemed too raspy
and jarring for most people's taste, though he still released
about a dozen albums of his own. His true talent, however,

(12:04):
was songwriting. He went on to write more than eight
hundred songs by the end of his life, many of
which were recorded and performed by some of the top
artists of his day, everyone from Waylon Jennings and Willie
Nelson to Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. In fact,
shel Silverstein even won a Grammy for a song he
wrote for Cash. Nineteen sixty Nine's a Boy Named Sue

(12:28):
If you've never heard it, The song tells the story
of a boy who was saddled with the name Sue
by his absentee father. After being picked on all his
life or having a quote unquote girl's name. He swears
revenge and eventually tracks down his wayward dad. At that point,
the boy's father reveals that he only named his son
Sue because he wanted to make him tough, knowing that

(12:49):
he'd be forced to stand up for himself whenever people
made fun of him. For whatever reason. Sue accepts the explanation,
and father and son are reconciled. Take a listen, Well.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
My daddy left Tom when I was three, and he
didn't leave much. Tomaw and me just this old guitar
and a empty bottle of food. I don't blame him,
because he running hit. But the meanest thing that he
ever did was before he left.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
He was and named me Sue.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
Well, he must have thought that it was quite a joke,
and it got a lot of laughs from lots of vote.
It seems I had to fight my whole life through.
Some gal would giggle and I'd get rid, and some
god laughed night and bust his head. I'll tell you
life ain't easy for a boy named Sue.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
You might not expect such dark subject matter to come
from the mind of a celebrated children's author, but that
kind of black humor is par for the course in
shel Silverstein's poetry. One of my favorite examples is the
poem Dreadful from Where the Sidewalk Ends. Shelle gave a
much better reading than I could, so here he is
for the poem's final verse.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Someone hate the baby, What a frightful thing to eat?
Someone hate the baby? The one she wasn't very sweet.
It was a hardless thing to do. The policeman heaven
got a clue. They simply can't imagine who would go

(14:23):
and eat the baby?

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Many of Shell's poems reflect a mischievous, even ghoulish sense
of humor. Some parents find it inappropriate, but kids can't
seem to get enough of it. In fact, I think
that's a big part of the appeal for young readers,
the hints of menace and sadness that underlines so much
of Shell's writing. Sure, the silliness and cleverness of his

(14:49):
rhymes also has a lot to do with it, as
does the musicality of his poems. They're just plain fun
both to read and to hear. But Silverstein's edge or
dark side, is the the thing that really separates his
verses from those of someone like Doctor Seuss, to whom
he was often compared. Another quick poem that goes a
long way toward explaining the Shell Silverstein difference is the

(15:12):
Land of Happy. It goes like this, Have you been
to the land of happy? Where everyone's happy all day,
where they joke and they sing of the happiest things,
and everything's jolly and gay. There's no one unhappy and happy.
There's laughter and smiles galore. I have been to the

(15:33):
land of Happy? What a bore. The reason that kind
of material is appealing to children is because on some level,
they recognize and appreciate the honesty of it. They know
that life isn't always safe and happy, because even at
an early age, kids sometimes don't feel that way themselves.
But unlike other authors, Shell Silverstein didn't pull any punches.

(15:57):
In fact, he once went on record with The New
New York Times about just how much he disliked happy
endings and magical solutions in children's stories. He felt those
easy answers were a cop out and that they created
a sense of alienation in the reader. He went on
to explain further, saying, quote, the child asks why I
don't have this happiness thing you're telling me about and

(16:20):
comes to think that when his joy stops, that he
has failed, that it won't come back. Shel Silverstein sought
to avoid that outcome in his own work. He wanted
to train kids not only to recognize that some stories
have sad endings, but to accept that and to still
enjoy the story regardless. It all goes back to that

(16:41):
revolutionary idea of his to be honest with children. A
parent's gut reaction is to try and spare their kids
the pain of sad unhappy endings whenever possible. But in
practice that just leaves them with an incomplete worldview, which
is far worse in the long run than a few
tears at story time. That said, it's important to note

(17:02):
that shell Silverstein was hardly a doom and gloom author.
In addition to his more light hearted verses, he also
penned some of the most inspirational children's poems to ever
grace a nursery. There are almost too many to choose from,
but to close out the show today, I want to
leave you with one of my personal favorites. It's called
Listen to the Muscins, and like many of the best

(17:25):
Shell Silverstein poems, it offers a pertinent lesson for readers
of any age. Listen to the Muscins. Child, Listen to
the don'ts, Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won't,
listen to the never haves. Then listen close to me.
Anything can happen, Child, Anything can be. I'm Gabe Lucier

(17:53):
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. You can learn even more
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at TDI HC Show, and if you have any comments
or suggestions. Feel free to pass them along by writing
to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler

(18:16):
Mays and Ben Hackett for producing the show, and thank
you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow
for another day in history class