Sheldon Silverstein was born on September 25th, 1930 in Chicago. He started out his cartoonist career while he was in the army, he would create cartoons for some of the military magazines. Later he was a big hit with Playboy Magazine as a satirical cartoonist. Silverstein wrote a few songs as well, such as the well known Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue". As a writer as well, his book "The Giving Tree" was the book that really started his career in children's literature. After this book was published in 1964 he started writing more and more children's books. He also started to create collections of children's poems and drawings. During his life he won the Grammy Award in 1970, and after his death he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002. He died in Florida on May 8th, 1999.