Cartoonist Shel Silverstein, who also dabbled in a few other creative efforts,
was honored with a stamp from the United States Postal Service yesterday.
Beloved children’s author and illustrator Shel Silverstein will be honored on a United States commemorative stamp to be issued April 8 at a Chicago elementary school that he attended as a young boy. Silverstein was born in Chicago on Sept. 25, 1930.
The Shel Silverstein stamp will be available for purchase in panes of 20 nationwide on the first day of issue. A total of 20 million stamps (1 million panes) were printed by Ashton Potter (USA) Ltd. of Williamsville, N.Y.
According to the USPS, Stamp Fulfillment Services will not make an automatic push distribution of the Shel Silverstein stamp to post offices. Therefore, it is likely that some post offices will not have panes available for sale on April 8.
Although the stamp is a tribute to Silverstein, it also celebrates what is arguably the author’s best-known work, The Giving Tree, which Harper & Row first published in 1964.
Block Club Chicago reports on the ceremony:
LOGAN SQUARE — Shel Silverstein was a student at Darwin Elementary in Logan Square many years before becoming one of the most famous children’s authors of all time.
The writer’s Darwin roots were the focus of an unveiling ceremony for a Shel Silverstein commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service. The unveiling was held Friday at the school.
Silverstein is perhaps most famous for writing and illustrating wildly popular children’s books “The Giving Tree” (1964) and “Where The Sidewalk Ends” (1974). He was also a famous playwright and a musician who wrote several folk songs, including “A Boy Named Sue,” which was made famous by Johnny Cash. He died from a heart attack in 1999.
The USPS announcement of the honor.
