It’s clear that Silverstein, who grew up in Chicago in the 1930s, did not set out to write things for kids. In fact, he hated most children’s literature. To Silverstein, the classics and contemporary books alike were trash, though he had a soft spot for Dr. Suess. But as for old stand-bys like Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little — “Those damn books are so bad they’re beautiful,” he once said, according to A Boy Named Shel, a 2011 biography by Lisa Rogak. “The condescension is not only thick enough to walk on, but absolutely destructive.” So when a friend suggested he start penning picture books, he thought it was far-fetched; Silverstein was known mainly for drawing offbeat cartoons for Playboy magazine, and was a regular visitor of the Playboy Mansion.

I gave the students in my General Ecology class a survey. Among other things, they were asked to rate their understanding of the negative interactions between humans and the environment. Nearly every one of the two hundred students said confidently that humans and nature are a bad mix. These were third-year students who had selected a career in environmental protection, so the response was, in a way, not very surprising. They were well schooled in the mechanics of climate change, toxins in the land and water, and the crisis of habitat loss. Later in the survey, they were asked to rate their knowledge of positive interactions between people and land. The median response was “none.”