SOURCE: MacDonald, Ruth K. “Poetry with the Electricity On.” In Shel Silverstein, pp. 77-107. New York: Twayne, 1997.

In the following essay, MacDonald provides extensive discussion and analyses of the poems collected in Silverstein's A Light in the Attic.

A Light in the Attic is far and away Shel Silverstein's best work for children, and the most daring. It was clearly designed as a book by itself and for itself rather than as a collection of pieces published elsewhere that were cut, pasted, tweaked, added to, and changed for book-length publication for youth readership, as was Sidewalk. The book's design speaks to Silverstein's focused effort and to his vision of the book as original work published for a single, intended market. From the cover to the final poem, the book has a clearer sense than does Sidewalk of its audience and the length of its narrative and better expresses...