HarperCollins has revealed the cover and title of a posthumously published Shel Silverstein poetry collection: Every Thing On It. The publisher will print one million copies of the September release.

Here’s more about the book: “With more than one hundred and thirty never-before-seen poems and drawings completed by the cherished American artist and selected by his family from his archives, this collection will follow in the tradition and format of his acclaimed poetry classics.”

Silverstein passed away in 1999, but his children’s poetry collections (Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic) have a dedicated audience. The poet, illustrator and songwriter hesitated to enter the children’s market until he met the legendary children’s editor Ursula Nordstrom and she convinced him to try.

It’s not too often that a book party and a self-confessed obsession converge, let alone in a high-end bookstore just down the street from Carnegie Hall, but last night’s soiree at Rizzoli for the launch of a posthumous collection of Shel Silverstein‘s travel writings for Playboy came perilously close to bringing out the fangirl in me. For in another life, post-USENET and pre-blog, I spent hundreds of hours maintaining an archival site with the most rudimentary HTML skills, a frightening amount of drive and a lot of wide-eyed glee. Suffice to say that Silverstein’s prodigious and prolific output, dedicated work ethic and lifelong quest for creative freedom appealed to my early twentysomething self in a big way.

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