photo: Larry Moyer

Shel Silverstein was born on September 25, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois, where he was writing from the time he was a young boy. He was a composer, an artist, and the author of numerous books of prose and poetry for younger readers.

Silverstein's prose works include such modern classics as The Giving Tree (1963), Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back (1963), and The Missing Piece (1976), while his immensely popular poetry collections include Where the Sidewalk Ends, which received a Michigan Young Readers Award in 1974, A Light in the Attic, which received a School Library Journal Best Books Award in 1982, and, most recently, Falling Up (HarperCollins, 1996).

Silverstein's work, which he illustrated himself, is characterized by a deft mixing of the sly and the serious, the macabre and the just plain silly. His wicked, giddy humor is beloved by countless adults as well as by children. He died in May 1999.