SOURCE: Larrick, Nancy. “From Tennyson to Silverstein: Poetry for Children, 1910-1985.” Language Arts 63, no. 6 (October 1986): 594-600.

In the following essay, Larrick asserts that Silverstein's volumes A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends marked a new era in poetry written for children.

Birthdays often suggest a look backward to beginnings. On the occasion of the seventy-fifth birthday of NCTE, I decided to look back to children's poetry of the year 1910. What was it like then and how did today's poetry for children emerge?

The contrasts in poetry are startling, but so are the contrasts in the times. Telephones were a rarity in 1910. Radio and television were only an inventor's dream, and few houses were wired for electricity. In the great cities thousands of children under ten were spending long hours as factory laborers.

In all probability these were not the children William Ernest Henley had in...