Who is Shel Silverstein?
Shel Silverstein was born Sheldon Allan Silverstein on September 25, 1930 in Chicago IL. He was widely known as an award-winning children’s author and illustrator, but was also a composer, folk singer, playwright, and prolific writer and poet. His best-known works are The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, and Falling Up. Shel Silverstein grew up in a relatively low-class area in Chicago and quickly developed an interest in writing and drawing. He attended the University of Illinois for a year as an art student before attending the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In September 1953, he was drafted into the Army and served in Korea and Japan. While there, he worked as a cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, a U.S. military publication. As a civilian in 1956, Shel Silverstein took another job as a cartoonist, this time with Playboy magazine. There he went on to draw many cartoons and write many articles, his first being “Confessions of a Button Down Man.” During this ti
