We picked up a used copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, and Evie and I recently finished reading it.

Although Evie is a little young for it, it went over surprisingly well. There are a few poems that seemed to have captured her imagination, specifically “Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too”, “Hungry Mungry”, and “The Unicorn”, among many others.

Actually, I forgot how much I liked this book until I was re-reading it with her. It really took me back to my childhood, when I read this book innumerable times. I felt like each time I turned the page I thought, “Oh yeah! This one!” It felt pretty special to share those with her. And here it was something I had almost completely forgotten about!

Shel Silverstein has a lot of famous books, but the two best in my opinion are “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and A Light in the Attic”.

I don’t know that I’ve ever met anybody that didn’t like the poetry of Shel Silverstein, and I kind of feel like these books are part of the pop-culture landscape of my childhood, in that pretty much everybody was familiar with them. I hope that my kids enjoy them as much as I did when I was a kid.

Based on Evie’s reaction to “Where the Sidewalk Ends”, it seems likely.