Editing Shel Silverstein (section)

===Cartoons===
[[File:Shelaroundworld07.jpg|left|thumb|160px|Silverstein's ''[[Playboy]]'' travelogues, collected in 2007]]
Silverstein began drawing at age seven by tracing the works of [[Al Capp]].<ref>Studs Terkel interview, WFMT, December 12, 1963.</ref> He told ''[[Publishers Weekly]]'': "When I was a kid—12 to 14, I'd much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that I didn't have anybody to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style; I was creating before I knew there was a [[James Thurber|Thurber]], a [[Robert Benchley|Benchley]], a [[George Price (cartoonist)|Price]] and a [[Saul Steinberg|Steinberg]]. I never saw their work 'til I was around 30. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit."<ref name="pw">{{Cite magazine |last=Mercier |first=Jean F. |date=February 24, 1975 |title=Shel Silverstein |magazine=[[Publishers Weekly]]}}</ref>

He was first published in the ''Roosevelt Torch,'' a student newspaper at [[Roosevelt University]], where he studied English after leaving the Art Institute. During his time in the military, his cartoons were published in ''[[Pacific Stars and Stripes]]'', where he had originally been assigned to do layouts and [[paste up]]. His first book ''Take Ten'', a compilation of his military ''Take Ten'' cartoon series, was published by ''Pacific Stars and Stripes'' in 1955. He later said his time in college was a waste and would have been better spent traveling around the world meeting people.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Shel Silverstein Biography |url=http://www.super-childrens-books.com/shel-silverstein-biography.html |access-date=June 10, 2012 |website=Super-Childrens-Books.com |publisher=Super Children's Books}}</ref>

After returning to Chicago, Silverstein began submitting cartoons to magazines while also selling hot dogs at Chicago ballparks. His cartoons began appearing in ''Look'', ''Sports Illustrated'' and ''This Week''.<ref name="legacy">{{Cite web |title=Shel Silverstein |url=http://www.legacyrecordings.com/Shel-Silverstein.aspx |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090310192155/http://www.legacyrecordings.com/Shel-Silverstein.aspx |archive-date=March 10, 2009 |website=LegacyRecordings.com}}</ref>

Mass-market paperback readers across America were introduced to Silverstein in 1956 when ''Take Ten'' was reprinted by [[Ballantine Books]] as ''Grab Your Socks!''

In 1957, Silverstein became one of the leading cartoonists in ''[[Playboy]]'', which sent him around the world to create an illustrated travel journal with reports from far-flung locales. During the 1950s and 1960s, he produced 23 installments called "Shel Silverstein Visits..." as a feature for ''Playboy''. Employing a sketchbook format with typewriter-styled captions, he documented his own experiences at such locations as a Pennsylvania [[naturist community]], the [[Chicago White Sox]] training camp, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, Fire Island, Mexico, London, Paris, Spain and Africa. In a Swiss village, he drew himself complaining, "I'll give them 15 more minutes, and if nobody yodels, I'm going back to the hotel." These illustrated travel essays were collected by the publisher Fireside in ''Playboy's Silverstein Around the World,'' published in 2007 with a foreword by [[Hugh Hefner]] and an introduction by music journalist Mitch Myers.<ref name="tim">{{Cite magazine |last=Cahill |first=Tim |date=November 9, 1972 |title=Dr. Hook's VD and Medicine Shows |url=http://shelsilverstein.tripod.com/DrHook/dh110972.html |magazine=[[Rolling Stone]] |access-date=February 27, 2013 |via=ShelSilverstein.Tripod.com}}</ref>

In a similar vein were his illustrations for [[John Sack|John Sack's]] ''[[Report from Practically Nowhere]]'' (1959), a collection of humorous travel vignettes previously appearing in ''Playboy'' and other magazines.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sack, John |title=Report from Practically Nowhere |title-link=Report from Practically Nowhere |publisher=[[Curtis Publishing Company]] |year=1959 |location=New York |author-link=John Sack}}</ref>

===="Now here's my plan..."====
[[File:Nowplansilverstein.jpg|thumb|160px|"Now here's my plan...", Silverstein's best known cartoon of the 1950s, became the title of his 1960 cartoon collection]]

A cartoon he made during the 1950s was featured on the cover of his next cartoon collection, titled ''Now Here's My Plan: A Book of Futilities'', which was published by [[Simon & Schuster]] in 1960. Silverstein biographer Lisa Rogak wrote:
<blockquote>The cartoon on the cover that provides the book's title would turn out to be one of his most famous and often-cited cartoons. In the cartoon, two prisoners are chained to the wall of a prison cell. Both their hands and feet are shackled. One says to the other, "Now here's my plan." Silverstein was both fascinated and distressed by the amount of analysis and commentary that almost immediately began to swirl around the cartoon. "A lot of people said it was a very pessimistic cartoon, which I don't think it is at all," he said. "There's a lot of hope even in a hopeless situation. They analyze it and question it. I did this cartoon because I had an idea about a funny situation about two guys."<ref name=rogak/></blockquote>
Silverstein's cartoons appeared in issues of ''Playboy'' from 1957 through the mid-1970s, and one of his ''Playboy'' features was expanded into ''[[Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book]]'' (Simon & Schuster, 1961), his first book of new, original material for adults.