12. Every Thing On It

Written & illustrated by Shel Silverstein

HarperCollins, 2011

$19.99, ages 1 and up, 208 pages

Everything on it. That's how you order a serving of Shel Silverstein.

You pile on all the poems and drawings of his that you can get.

In the title poem of this fantastic collection, a boy piles on crazy things on his hotdog -- a snake, a hat, you name it.

But unlike his hotdog with everything on it, with Silverstein, there's nothing you'd want to leave out.

And luckily we don't have to!

In this volume, fans get to devour 145 poems by the late great Silverstein that were edited out of earlier books.

Edited out, not because he thought them lesser, but because they didn't fit the organization of a particular book.

That means all 145 have never before been published before, and the same is true of the drawings that accompany them.

Among so many favorites, mine is "Spider" on page 190.

Here's the poem "Spider" in full:

"A spider lives inside my head

Who weaves a strange and wondrous web

Of silken threads and silver strings

To catch all sorts of flying things,

Like crumbs of thought and bits of smiles

And specks of dried-up tears,

And dust of dreams that catch and cling

For years and year and years…" 

Read a full review of Every Thing On It here!