Books

Where the Sidewalk Ends
By Shel Silverstein, HarperCollins, 1974

Deliciously wacky, a little subversive, Shel Silverstein's poetry is a sometimes serious bit of silliness that never grows old, whether the reader is 5 or 95.

Where the Sidewalk Ends is the definitive collection. I have recommended Silverstein to friends, who have then been disappointed after buying A Light in the Attic. It may have some gems, sure, but Sidewalk stays wholly on solid ground.

How can any boy or girl (or their parents) resist the gross-out factor of "Double-Tail Dog," who "cannot bite, he'll never bark or growl, Just scratch him on his tails, he'll find it pleasing. But you'll have to take him out For twice as many walks, And I'll bet that you can quickly guess the reason."

Or "Hat," which in five lines elucidates the drawbacks of having a big brother: "Teddy said it was a hat, So I put it on. Now Dad is saying, 'Where the heck's the toilet plunger gone?'"

My girls love "Band-Aids," in which a little boy (illustrated in plaintive, messy-haired glory by the author) recites how he has bandages stuck all over his body, but not a single "cut or a sore." And "Pancake?" whose "terrible Theresa" demands a flapjack from the middle of a towering stack.

Being a nut fancier myself, I've always appreciated "Peanut-Butter Sandwich," a longer tale that explains how a silly king "only loved one single thing," the sticky food of the title. One day, his mouth gets "stuck quite tight from that last bite of peanut butter sandwich." After years of effort by subjects and experts, his jaws "open with a creak" and his faint voice requests another sandwich.

Silverstein just gets children. He knows instinctively what makes them tick, what tickles their funny little bones. He channels his own inner boy in all his whimsical poems and simple line drawings.

But he also gets that childhood is finite, that adults inevitably burst forth from the cocoon of childhood, too often leaving their imagination and whimsy behind in the detritus. And he mourns the loss with a light hand in poems that, now, only adults understand.

Like "Forgotten Language:" "Once I spoke the language of the flowers, Once I understood each word the caterpillar said, Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings, And shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed. … Once I spoke the language of the flowers …. How did it go? How did it go?" The ache of yearning, of loss, is palpable but not at all maudlin.

Thirty years after first encountering the amazingly talented Shel Silverstein, I still don't tire of his company when evening descends and little ones demand their nightly reading ritual. Where the Sidewalk Ends is never-ending fun for us all.