Carl’s Letter Essay #3 “Where The Sidewalk Ends”

I read the book Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. The book consists of 166 pages, and the genre is poetry. The book was published in 1974 and is still very popular. I read this book because, One of my alltime favorite early childhood books is the giving tree which is by Shel Silverstein. Also I have always heard of the book, and i’ve read one or two poems originally from the book but I had never read the full book. When I found out we had it in the school library I had to read it. I also like the poetic format of the book …. it’s something different from the average book that people normally read. Shel silverstein wrote 12 books in his career and happened to be the writer and the illustrator of his books. And believe it or not he was also a singer and a songwriter!  I really enjoyed the book and liked how the book flowed. I feel that each one of his poems are unique.   

The book is very interesting as in the fact that it really doesn’t have a storyline. The book really consists of many different poems that to not tie together with each other. But each one of his poems are so creative and make you want to read the next one and the next one….  The poems  are about really random things, which I think is good because it sets his book aside from others. For example one of the poems was about an old lady that ate a whole whale, there are lots of crazy poems that he includes in the book. I was very happy to have finally read his book and I am looking forward to reading and rereading some of his other books!

I was satisfied with the fact that he was still illustrating his books. Be cause I admire the fact that he writes and illustrates his books because I remember he did that in his earlier books. And I was glad to see that he has kept that up.  I was also satisfied that I found the book similar to the giving tree which I enjoyed when I read it as a young child. Another thing that satisfied me was the wide variety of poems that he included. It made the book very interesting! One Quoted passage that I appreciated was,

“I will not play at tug o’ war.

I’d rather play at hug o’ war,

Where everyone hugs

Instead of tugs,

Where everyone giggles

And rolls on the rug,

Where everyone kisses,

And everyone grins,

And everyone cuddles,

And everyone wins.”

To me I feel that this describes that we should focus on more positive things in life and not on the negative.  There will always be something going on that that you can have a negative perspective on and I think that this represents trying to be more positive.  Overall I would rate this book an 8 out of 10. I really enjoyed it !

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1 thought on “Carl’s Letter Essay #3 “Where The Sidewalk Ends”

  1. Carl,

    I really enjoyed reading your review of Where the Sidewalk ends. I was drawn to your piece because I can clearly remember taking Where the Sidewalk Ends out of the SSES library time and time again but I couldn’t remember what the book was about. I really love the poem you picked because I feel like it’s a good example of Silverstein’s work. After reading your review, I definitely want to read this again.

    Thanks!
    Sophia

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