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I have been a children's librarian for twenty-four years, the last eleven at a branch library on
the north side of Spokane, Washington. In all that time, the book that has been stolen from my
shelves most often is Where the Sidewalk Ends. I have replaced it, by my count, thirty-one
times. I have never once been angry about it. If a child is going to steal a book, let it be that
one.
Shel Silverstein died this May, at his home in Key West, Florida. It was his heart. He was 68. I found out from one of my Tuesday story-hour mothers, who came in the next morning with her four-year-old and just stood at the desk and said, "Did you hear?" And I had. We both stood there a minute. Then her son asked for the one about the girl who ate the whale, and we went and found it, because that is what you do. My name is Bonnie Tillotson. This is my page for him. It's black and white, like his books. |
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The man
He was born in Chicago. He was drafted in the 1950s and sent to Japan and Korea, where he drew cartoons for Pacific Stars and Stripes, the Army paper. After that he drew for magazines, and he wrote songs, a great many of them. Johnny Cash had a hit with his "A Boy Named Sue," and Shel won a Grammy for writing it. The Irish Rovers sang his "The Unicorn." Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show sang his "The Cover of the Rolling Stone." Most of the children who come into my library have no idea about any of that, and I think that is just fine with him. In the early sixties an editor talked him into making a book for children. After that came a lot of them. On my shelves, in the order they arrived:
He almost never gave interviews. He let the books go out and do the talking. That's the best way, I think. The picture of him on the back of The Giving Tree, with the bald head and the beard and that look, has frightened a few of my younger patrons over the years. I tell them he was a man who spent all his time making children laugh, and was just being serious for the camera. |
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What the children ask for
I kept a tally sheet at the desk this summer. These are the ones my story-hour children asked for most, in their own words, which are better than mine:
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About The Giving Tree
Every librarian has had this argument with a grown-up. Is it a sweet book or a sad one? Is the tree kind or is the boy selfish? I've heard it from mothers, from ministers, and once from two grandfathers who nearly came to blows in the picture book aisle. My answer, for what it's worth: the book doesn't tell you, and that is why people have been arguing about it for thirty-five years. Children don't argue about it. They just get very quiet at the end and ask to read it again. |
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The week in May
The week after he died we set every one of his books out on the low table by the window, and by Thursday every one of them was checked out, including the two copies of Falling Up with the cover taped on. On Saturday the children brought sidewalk chalk and drew on the walk out front, starting at the door, and kept going until the sidewalk ended at the parking lot. Then a boy named Andre, age seven, asked me what happens after that. I said I didn't know, but I thought it was nice there. He considered this and said okay. It rained Sunday night and washed it all away. That was nice too, somehow. |
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Returns by the Story Lady, with apologies to nobody His books come back to me all bent, with jelly on the page, with crayon on the giraffe's neck and a sock stuck in the middle of the lion's cage. One came back with a tooth in it, a small one, baby-white. One came back three years overdue, and the boy said sorry, he had read it every night. One came back in a little girl's hand who would not let it go. She said, "Can I keep it one more week?" And the Story Lady did not say no. So go on and bend them, children. Go on and read them to rags. The man who made them is gone now. I'll just order more. I'll bring bags. |
