The Late Shel Silverstein Is Back

Shel Silverstein, who died in 1999 and would have celebrated his 81^st birthday later this month, was a prolific perfectionist. As he said in an interview with the US Army newspaper Stars & Stripes in 1968, children's books, poetry, and songwriting appealed to him the most because "I can write a poem in 10 minutes. I like writing songs, I can write songs in 5 or 10 minutes. My concentration seems very short."