Shel Silverstein is credited with helping young readers develop an appreciation of poetry with his popular collections Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974) and A Light in the Attic (1981). His serious verse reveals an understanding of common childhood anxieties and wishes, and his books were accompanied by his own witty, quirky illustrations.
Notably, Silverstein often eschewed happy or moralistic endings because children, he said, might otherwise wonder why they themselves were not comparably happy. This is exemplified by his book The Giving Tree (1964), a story of a tree and the boy she loves that became Silversteinās most popular prose work. Silverstein has often been compared to another icon of childrenās literature, Dr. Seuss.