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A review of The Giving Tree

by Shel Silverstein

A tree gives everything to the boy she loves. This story by Shel Silverstein is considered one of the classics.

Reviewed by: Heather Ray
About Heather Ray

The Giving Tree This book makes me cry. A lot. I'm talking full-fledged weeping. It made me cry when I read it about twenty years ago and it makes me cry today when I read it to my little son. A lot. That being said, believe me when I say you must get this book.

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein teaches a lesson that we would all do well to learn: one of friendship, and sacrifice, and love. Written in simple prose and with cartoonish, black and white illustrations, the book tells the story of a little boy and the tree that loved him. The boy plays in the tree, and eats her apples, and loves the tree as much as she loves him. Then the boy grows up. To tell you much more than that would give too much away, but know that the tree is always there when the boy needs her. It takes a long time for the boy to appreciate this.

I said earlier that the illustrations are cartoonish. What I didn't say was that they are also beautiful in their simplicity. One picture is just the trunk of the tree bending toward an empty page. You know that the tree is bending toward the absent little boy, and so the picture makes you smile even as it breaks your heart.

I also said that the prose in which this story is written is simple. So it is. It doesn't need to be flowery or overly whimsical like so many children's books are. I think this is because Silverstein is telling a basic truth: every person in this world loves somebody. Most people would do anything for that somebody and sometimes that somebody doesn't seem to notice. And that hurts.

My best friend gave this book to my son before he was even born. Her ex-boyfriend had given it to her. My mother read it to me when I was a little girl after one of her friends at the preschool where she worked read it to her class. It is a story that touches the heart of almost every person who reads it, child or adult.

Go get this book. Share it with your children. Share it with your friends. It's worth every tear.

Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: The Giving Tree

Copyright © by Heather Ray, 2002

Reviewed by Heather Ray :
-- The Blue Sword - by Robin McKinley
-- The Hero and the Crown - by Robin McKinley
-- Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening - by Robert Frost, illustrated by Susan Jeffers
-- Little Women - by Louisa May Alcott
-- The Giving Tree - by Shel Silverstein
-- The Tin Forest - by Helen Ward, illustrated by Wayne Anderson
-- New Book of Herbs - by Jekka McVicar









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