Where the Sidewalk Ends
Shel Silverstein, 1974
Poetry Graphic novels & humourLiterary fictionContemporary fiction
Poems and drawings that treat children as sharp enough for nonsense, grief, greed and wonder—and adults as people who never quite grew out of either.
Feels like wonder and tenderness. About morality, memory and art.
A page from the book
The place past the last streetlight is still waiting for you.
There is a place where the sidewalk endsAnd before the street begins,And there the grass grows soft and white,And there the sun burns crimson bright,And there the moon-bird rests from his flightTo cool in the peppermint wind.Let us leave this place where the smoke blows blackAnd the dark street winds and bends.Past the pits where the asphalt flowers growWe shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,And watch where the chalk-white arrows goTo the place where the sidewalk ends. Shel Silverstein.Silverstein wrote Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” and drew for Playboy; he insisted on illustrating his children’s poems himself.
Books that feel like this
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Jonas Jonasson, 2009
Also memory and morality.
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- What is Where the Sidewalk Ends like?
- Feels like wonder and tenderness. About morality, memory and art.
- What should I read after Where the Sidewalk Ends?
- If you liked Where the Sidewalk Ends, try The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson), Tuck Everlasting (Natalie Babbitt) and Poetry (John Keats).
A taste of the feed
Death as sleep sounds restful until you try to think it through.
Imagine that, death was just like being asleep. Would he have time to think before it was all over? And would he have time to think that he had thought it? But wait, how much do you have to think before you have finished thinking?
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared · Jonas Jonasson
What it means to be one turn of a wheel that never stops.
Everything’s a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s the way it is.
Tuck Everlasting · Natalie Babbitt
A song that makes one night feel as old as the species.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Poetry · John Keats
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed