History Creator / ShelSilverstein

* EmptySwimmingPoolDive: The punchline of "The Dive."

** In "Have Fun", the narrator assures us that it's safe to swim in Penrose Park because there are no sharks in it. The illustration shows an octopus in the lake instead.

* CarnivoreConfusion: In "Strange Restaurant," the narrator tries to order food at a restaurant only to find that every dish [[spoiler:down to the salad]] requires killing some member of the staff. The waiter's a cow, the busboy's a hen, the chef is a fish, etc.

* BoundAndGagged: The poem "Kidnapped," complete with illustration of excessively tied and chained girl. [[spoiler:(Granted, it is eventually revealed to be a child’s excuse for why they were late for school)]]

* BigEater: In ''Where the Sidewalk Ends'', there is a poem about a girl who eats an entire whale. However, she takes eighty-two years to do it. This trope is also [[ExaggeratedTrope exaggerated]] in "Hungry Mungry", where a child ''eats the entire universe.''

* CarnivoreConfusion: In "Strange Restaurant," the narrator tries to order food at a restaurant only to find that every dis [[spoiler:down to the salad]] requires killing some member of the staff. The waiter's a cow, the busboy's a hen, the chef is a fish, etc.

* IAteWhat: In "The Crawfee", the titular fish is swimming in your coffee. And you drank it.

* AffectionateParody: The song "Sylvia's Mother" is one of heartbroken teen love songs. Inevitably, a lot of people who heard the Dr. Hook version somehow missed the joke.

His works include:

* AffectionateParody: The song "Sylvia's Mother" is an AffectionateParody of heartbroken teen love songs. Inevitably, a lot of people who heard the Dr. Hook version somehow missed the joke.

* DiedDuringProduction: Anything from ''Runny Babbit'' onward was released posthumously after Shel had a heart attack in 1999.

* DualMeaningChorus: The song "I Got Stoned And I Missed It."

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: Many of his poems could be in any time period, but in a poem about a boy who watched so much television he turned into one, two knobs labeled "vert" (vertical) and "horiz" (horizontal) grow out of him - those picture control knobs haven't been standard on sets for many, many years.

* EyeScream: In "Carrots", a boy hears that carrots are good for your eyesight and stabs a carrot into each of his eyes.

* ''[[{{Spoonerism}} Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook]]'' (poetry collection, published [[AuthorExistenceFailure posthumously]])

* AuthorExistenceFailure: Anything from ''Runny Babbit'' onward was released posthumously after Shel had a heart attack in 1999.

* {{Bowdlerise}}: The poem "The Googies Are Coming" was originally titled "The Gypsies Are Coming", before being changed to the current title for the sake of political correctness. (The poem is about the titular googies/gypsies coming to kidnap children and sell them.)

* WhosOnFirst: The poem "The Meehoo with an Exactlywatt."

* GrowingUpSucks: "I Won't Hatch!" is from the point of view of a baby chick who refuses to leave the safety of the egg because they've heard about all the horrible things in the world like shouting people and roaring airplanes, despite the cackling of the hens and the begging of the roosters.

* GrowingUpSucks: "I Won't Hatch!" is from the point of view of a baby chick who refuses to leave the safety of his/her egg because he's heard about all the horrible things in the world like war and airplanes, despite the cackling of the hens and the begging of the roosters.

''Teacher said: "It's time you [[{Hypocrite} knowed]]''\\

Sheldon Allan "Shel" Silverstein (September 25, 1932 – May 10, 1999) was best known as an author of offbeat children's poetry. He also wrote picture books, songs, song lyrics (most famously "[[Music/JohnnyCash A Boy Named Sue]]", "[[Music/TheIrishRovers The Unicorn]]" and "The Cover of Rolling Stone"), one-act plays and films. Fans of his mainstream work may be rather [[BleachedUnderpants stunned to hear]] that many of his songs are ''very'' adult in tone, and that he personally was a real-life ChickMagnet who lived for several years in the actual [[Magazine/{{Playboy}} Playboy Mansion]]. He died from a heart attack in May 1999 and was buried in a Chicago cemetery.

* AnAesop: Quite often, though sometimes sliding into FamilyUnfriendlyAesop. For example, in "The Great Smoke Off":

* MortonsFork: In "Pie Problem".