Many of Silverstein’s usual themes are present here as well: his fascination with old-time ditties like “Yankee Doodle” and historical figures such as George Washington, the cheerful complaining about household chores and parental orders and the not-so-subtle subversion of authority and championing of independence.

In fact, in reading through each piece, the mind instinctively puts the letters back in their proper place, so that the poems read perfectly well on their own, showcasing Silverstein’s trademark playfulness, humor, and his innate ability to capture the thought patterns and rhythms inherent to young children. The joke does, of course, wear thin, but Silverstein’s poems are smarter and more robust to rely entirely on this gimmick. Unlike Spoonerisms, which require the inverted words to be real ones as well, Silverstein’s more interested in creating novel sounds and finding new ways to add to the toilet humor canon. It’s difficult not to chuckle at reversals like “sinned and graid” or “sea poup” or “ficken charmer” or “ficked his pood up with his ears,” and think of how these would sound to a child on the verge of helpless laughter. The principal joke is simple enough: invert the first letter of each of a two-word string so that “Bunny Rabbit” becomes “runny babbit” and so on and so forth, as clearly set out in the opening poem: A seed germinated way back in 1972 when Silverstein mentioned to his then-editor, Joan Robins, that he was toying with writing a book for kids that features poems written bass-ackwards (so to speak) came to fruition with the publication last month of Runny Babbit, and the result is both expected and unexpected: the former because it has all the usual tropes of Silverstein’s voice, and the latter because it’s perhaps the best book for children he wrote since 1981’s A Light in the Attic. Over time, some of those projects were completed, including an album of children’s songs co-written with Pat Dailey and two productions of short plays, but only silence on the children’s book front.īut fate, family wishes and judicious editing had other ideas. In other words, to quote Bela Bartok, he died “with still so much to say,” and it looked as if there would be no more opportunity for Silverstein to do so.

When the noted renaissance man - he was, whenever he wanted to be, a singer, songwriter, cartoonist, playwright, Playboy staple, children’s author or all of the above – died in 1999 of a heart attack, he was in the middle of several projects and extremely active.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Silverstein’s birth, so the arrival of a previously unpublished work has to be put into proper context.

Runny Babbit by Shel Silverstein