Book Blog #9: A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

A Light in the Attic

Written and Illustrated by Shel Silverstein

HarperCollins Publishing, Copyright 1981

Poetry

Plot Summary:

This book of poems by Shel Silverstein includes silly stories that allow the reader to look at ordinary objects and people in a different way. Meet Backward Bill, Sour-faced Anne, and many more wacky characters and become enraptured by how the rhyming words are used to tell their stories.  Read A Light in the Attic to find out about some wacky, silly, and sometimes crazy characters in Shel Silverstein's attic!

Illustrations: Shel Silverstein also illustrated this book. The drawings are portrayed using a single-stroke technique, with no color. Many of the drawings are very detailed, and like the characters you meet in the book, sometimes wacky and out of place. Many of the illustrations are the kind of pictures where, if you keep looking, you will start to see more and more details than you saw when you looked at it for the first time. This is true when reading Silverstein's work also, because as you read the poems a second or third time, you might notice something that is said that you didn't notice the first time you read it. The illustrations give life to Silverstein's words that portray the exact kind of wacky image that comes to mind when reading how he describes each character. 

I would use this book in a 4th-6th grade reading lesson. I could use this book to teach on the topics of rhymes, rhyming words, theme, and author's purpose. Shel Silverstein often has a habit of writing poems or stories with hidden meanings, so it would be useful to ask my students to read and try to decipher why Silverstein wrote each specific poem: Was it just to be silly? Or did he have a reason for writing? I also believe that my students would benefit from seeing a different writing style such as Silverstein's. Exposing children to different types of writing styles will assist them in developing their reading skills!