Smart by Shel Silverstein

*Book overview from Barnes and Noble website*

Where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein's world begins. There you'll meet a boy who turns into a TV set and a girl who eats a whale. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and crocodiles go to the dentist.

*Okay, so I decided to look at a poem today not an actual book. It's called Smart, and I found it online so you can read it here (Where would we be without google?)!

Wanna pick up a copy of some of Silverstein's poems? Click here!

Okay, so I mostly chose this poem because it’s by Shel Silverstein (who doesn't love a good Silverstein poem?). Plus, it is too cute! The child/narrator of the story is so proud of himself in the end when he was showing his father how he supposedly made more money by swapping with people. I like this poem because it seems relevant to anyone. We’ve all probably been cheated of something, whether it be money or not.

At the end of the poem, when the father was clearly not happy with what the child had done, it just clarifies how much a human relies on currency. We feel like it is a need to survive. This blows my mind. We care that much about a piece of paper?! Shouldn’t we be focusing on more important topics? At the same time, it makes me question what the world would be like if we did not use currency and just got things for free. Would it make us less selfish?

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I always question the topic of money. It seems like the topic of money can change the character of someone in the blink of an eye. The sight of the father getting red in the face in this specific poem seems scary to me. A child makes a simple mistake, and the father is getting angry because he simply has less money now. Huh. What a world we live in.

My rating:***
~I love Shel Silverstein, but this isn't one of my favorite poems. It's cute, but he definitely has done better with his writing.