A Giraffe and a Half.

SILVERSTEIN, Shel.

Item Number: 118344

New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964.

Rare first edition of Shel Silverstein’s zany children’s tale A Giraffe and a Half. Quarto, original illustrated boards, illustrated throughout. Near fine in a near fine first-issue dust jacket. First editions are exceptionally rare.

Although he is best known in popular culture for his immensely popular children's books, American writer and artist Shel Silverstein was somewhat of Renaissance Man. After attending the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, Silverstein was drafted into the United States Army and served in Japan and Korea. He later became one of the leading cartoonists in Hugh Hefner's Playboy Magazine, which sent him around the world to create an illustrated travel journal with reports from various exotic locales. Silverstein's cartoons appeared in issues of Playboy from 1957 through the mid-1970s. One of his Playboy features was soon expanded into Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book (Simon & Schuster, 1961), Silverstein's first book featuring new, original material intended for adults. Because it was unclear as to whether some of the material was intended for adults or children, his editor at Harper & Row, Ursula Nordstrom, encouraged Silverstein to write children's poetry, resulting in a vastly commercially-successful and widely appreciated body of work. Silverstein was additionally a prolific song-writer, he wrote the music and lyrics for numerous high-charting singles, most notably Johnny Cash's A Boy Named Sue. A Giraffe and a Half is a collection of delightfully zany illustrations and rhymes about a boy and his giraffe who find themselves accumulating a series of ridiculous things. The book begins with the narrator imagining what could occur if one "had a giraffe and he stretched another half".