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I've been a huge fan of Shel Silverstein's since I discovered The Giving Tree when 
I was a kid.  I always do a Silverstein booktalk with my middle schoolers because 
they're already familiar with his poetry and they love to learn that there's so 
much more to him.  I start by letting them hear him read some poetry on an audio 
tape I have--usually Quick Trip or Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony from A 
Light in the Attic.  Silverstein's delivery and sound effects are just amazing!  
You can hear him read some of his poems on his website -  www.shelsilverstein.com.  
I also show kids his website and spend some time playing around on it using the 
inFocus projector and laptop.  Then I play them  A Boy Named Sue and talk about his 
relationship with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Jessi Coulter, etc.  I play a 
little bit of The Unicorn Song, another Silverstein song that was made popular by 
The Irish Rovers. I'd like to tell them about "One's On the Way," a hilarious song 
Loretta Lynn recorded, but we usually don't have time. I show them some appropriate 
pages from some of his more "adult" works, such as Different Dances and Uncle 
Shelby's Book of A-B-Z.  If you haven't read those two books, I HIGHLY recommend 
them!  They're RICH!  Silverstein wrote for Playboy for awhile, and much of 
Different Dances, and even some of the Book of A-B-Z can be quite shocking and 
definitely not appropriate to teach in school, but if you can get your hands on 
copies, I expect you'd derive a great deal of pleasure from them.  They've been 
some of my favorites for years!

Virginia Bigler, Librarian
Pease Middle School
San Antonio, Texas
vbigler@satx.rr.com

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