Six years after Shel Silverstein's death, HarperCollins Children's Books is publishing his Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook, a collection of poems and drawings featuring a feisty bunny—er, runny—as well as some inventive letter transpositions. In "Runny's Heading Rabits," for example, readers will discover that this lapin likes his reading material on the light side: "Runny lent to the wibrary/ And there were bundreds of hooks—/ Bistory hooks, beography gooks,/ And lots of bory stooks./ He looked them over one by one/ And guess which one he took—/ A bience scook? A boetry pook?/ Oh, no—a bomic cook!" Obviously anticipating that Silverstein's legion of fans will hop to buy this tongue-twisting tale, which has a laydown date of March 15, HarperCollins is rolling out with a 500,000-copy first printing.
Silverstein, who published The Giving Tree with Ursula Nordstrom at Harper & Row in 1964, worked on Runny Babbit for two decades, until his death in 1999, said his former editor, Joan Robins. She met Silverstein in 1972, when she was with Harper's publicity department. "He was working on Where the Sidewalk Ends at the time," she recalled, "and when that book was published, I persuaded him to do his first interview—with Jean Mercier of Publishers Weekly—as a book author" (Silverstein was a playwright, songwriter, performer and recording artist). Robins reported that Silverstein previously had refused to be interviewed, "as he was leery of doing publicity for his books and for a time didn't even want his books to be advertised. When he did agree to let his books appear in ads, he insisted that they consist simply of poems and line drawings—no quotes from reviewers, no hype. From the start, he wanted his work to be publicized by word of mouth."
Robins and Silverstein became friends, and eventually he asked her to become his editor, and then—Harper editorial head Charlotte Zolotow agreed. Robins worked with the author on The Missing Piece, A Light in the Attic and Falling Up. After her retirement from Harper in 1987, she had a consultant contract with the publisher that lasted until Silverstein's death. "During most of that time, we worked on Runny Babbit," she said.
Discussing the author's creative style, Robins recounted, "He worked very privately in many ways. As an editor, one had to appreciate his way of working, which, as far as I could surmise, went from word to word in the mysterious way of the creative process, and was ever subject to revision. He had mountains of poems and stories, in bits and pieces, and in different versions, written on stray pieces of paper."
The same held true for his drawings, Robins said. "He never discarded anything definitively. He liked to have as many readers of all ages as possible respond to his work and to indicate to him which of a set of poems and drawings were their favorites. This feedback seemed to feed his creativity. In the end, every revision he made was a new creation, starting with the word, adding or subtracting from the line drawing. His revisions continued into the blues, a challenge to the patience of printers and production people—and, of course, editors. You had to go with his flow, up to the final printings. And it always proved worth it."
Bringing the Book to Fruition
Given that Silverstein, Robins said, "was never really finished with any of his books until the last, tour de force moment," she declined to work on Runny Babbitafter the author died. In her words, "I felt I couldn't bring it to fruition. It needed Shel." After Silverstein's death, Toni Markiet, executive editor of HarperCollins Children's Books, became the book's editor, which, she said, entailed "basically taking care of copyediting details and making sure that the transpositions were complete. This was a bit complicated, since sometimes they involved single letters, sometimes diphthongs and sometimes three letters. We also chose the display type, since Shel had not gotten to the hand lettering."
Explaining why the book is being published several years after Silverstein's death, Markiet said that the timing was determined "by when his family felt they could address its publication." A note on the book's copyright page states: "Shel Silverstein's family wishes to acknowledge the invaluable help of everyone involved in bringing this remarkable little book to life."
Markiet said that "a great deal of thought went into everything Shel did. This is very much a book to be read aloud as well as to be read silently—it works equally well for the ear and the eye."
And is Runny Babbitis a departure from Silverstein's earlier poetry collections? "When I was first reading these poems," Markiet mused, "I found that I was transposing the words back to the real word, reading it straight. And when I did that, I discovered that this was reminiscent of other Shel books. The poems are just as funny when read straight—the added twist with the wordplay is like an extra gift. So it isdifferent from his other work—and it isn't." An irony that shever Clel would surely appreciate.
