Assignment #4; Where the Sidewalk Ends

       The collection of poems that I read were from Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends". Even though it is considered a poem book for kids, I'm accepting the challenge and making a good short essay for it in deep senior thoughts. In his collection of short poems, Silverstein uses powerful imagery and great syntax, which he changes randomly through the poems to bring you a better sense of what he's trying through his writing. With all of this and more combined into those 180 pages of pure genius, Silverstein produces a constant theme of imagination that leaves us wanting for more.

     As one reads the poems of this book, we can see a common theme present in them, and that would be the power of imagination and defying the rules of reality. All of Silverstein's poems have to do with breaking the restrictions that reality has placed upon us and finding out crazy and new ways of doing things. The title of the book even implements this theory, as it is called Where the Sidewalk Ends, and shows an illustration of two kids looking down at the edge of the world, something we all know is highly impossible. (The Earth IS round.)
    We can see this theme of imagination and reality defying ideas present in basically all his poems. In his first poem, "Invitation", Silverstein starts out the book out by saying,
"If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we shall have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!"
To me, Silverstein's basically inviting you to come and let your imagination run free and take a break from reality. His poems are crazy and out of the box, providing you some sense of relief and the feeling that you're in your own little world, away from your troubles as you read about his crazy thoughts.
      Silverstein's poems have to deal with crazy, out of the blue ideas. There's no possible way to just categorize them all into one group, because there's just no word in the English dictionary that allows us to do so. One thing they all do have in common is that they're all funny. One particular poem is called "Invention" and it gets a chuckle out of the people who read it, as it says,
"I've done it, I've done it!
Guess what I've done!
Invented a light that plugs into the sun.
The sun is bright enough,
The bulb is strong enough,
But, oh, there's only one thing wrong...
The cord ain't long enough."
This poem does not only, once again, show the theme of imagination, but also gives it a comical sense to it. We can all laugh a little at the idea of actually "inventing" a light bulb that can connect to the sun, I mean, we have solar panels for a reason, right? But once you finish this small poem, you can't help but laugh, a good heart felt laugh, at the fact that the innocence and imagination of the child in the illustrated drawing for the poem prevented him from realizing that the cord wouldn't actually reach the sun.
     Shel Silverstein proposes very well thought out poems that have to do with the theme of imagination, a theme that many children's book authors try to convey through their writings. He does it in a way that his poems become interesting to everyone from any age group, as you can see by the fact that I am writing an essay on it. Silverstein brings forth a well written poem book that brings out the inner child in you and offers you a chance to let your imagination run free while you read his short poems. And cue the applause~