When Shel Silverstein wrote the poem “Years From Now,” he seemed to know that one day he’d be gone but that his playful words and images would still be making children happy. “I cannot see your face,” he writes to his young readers, but in “some far-off place,” he assures them, “I hear you laughing ”” and I smile.”
The beloved children’s poet and illustrator died in 1999 at age 68. “Years From Now” is one of the poems in a new book called Every Thing On It that has just been released by Silverstein’s family. If you liked Silverstein’s other books, such as Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends, you’ll recognize poems ”” like “Frightened” ”” as vintage Shel:
“There are kids underneath my bed,”
Cried little baby monster Fred.
Momma monster smiled. “Oh, Fred,
There’s no such things as kids,” she said.
Read or listen to it all (audio highly recommended since it includes children reading some of the poems).