Shel Silverstein was born in 1930.

"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more—that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?....

—Excerpted from Shel Silverstein's Sick, from Shel Silverstein: Poems and Drawings; originally appeared in Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Poems and Drawings of Shel Silverstein. (Copyright: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2003).

The humor and silliness of this poem is the trademark style of Shel Silverstein, who has often been compared in talent to Dr. Seuss. Best-known for his poetry collections like Where the Sidewalk Ends and classic stories like The Giving Tree, Silverstein's career spanned over 30 years from his first publication in 1963 until his death in 1999 at the age of 68.

EDSITEment
In Childhood Through the Looking Glass (K–2), students explores the vision of childhood created by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland. Students begin by looking at Carroll's photographs of the real Alice for whom Carroll imagined his story.

Writing Poetry Like Pros (3–5) helps students explore a variety of poetry styles, including Silverstein's silly Sick, as they become motivated to write their own verse. Through reading, performing and writing poetry, students gain an appreciation for the wide range of feelings that can be evoked by this genre of writing.

Older students are exposed to an ancient form of poetry in Arabic Poetry: Guzzle a Ghazal! (9–12). Poetic challenges have been a part of Arabic culture since pre-Islamic times. In this lesson, students learn how the art of turning a rhyme into sly verbal sparring is considered a mark of intelligence and a badge of honor. The lesson contains three activities for students to understand and appreciate the intricate poetry of the ghazal.

Illuminations
In Buttons! Buttons! (Pre–K–2), students participate in activities in which they focus on connections between mathematics and children's literature such as Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel and How Big is a Foot by Rolf Myller. The lesson includes an individual activity and printable activity sheet for four different grade bands, plus a take-home activity to do with parents and family.

In Shapes Art (Pre–K–5), students participate in activities in which they focus on connections between mathematics and children's literature. They listen to the poem "Shapes" from Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic and then recognize, draw and describe geometric figures.

ReadWriteThink
Students learn how fun it can be to play with words in An Alternative to Testing: Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster (3–5). Modeled after the story, students brainstorm a list of vocabulary terms from a unit of study they have just finished. Based upon that list of terms, students then develop concrete ways to illustrate them, creating presentations that can be in the form of a parade or a video.

Shel Silverstein's poems can be used as a weekly poem, through which students explore meaning, sentence structure, rhyming words, sight words, vocabulary and print concepts, as described in Poetry Portfolios: Using Poetry to Teach Reading and Writing (K–2).

In Choosing One Word: Summarizing Shel Silverstein's "Sick" (K–2), students read Shel Silverstein's "Sick," select what they believe to be the most important word in the poem and justify their choice.