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4.29 AVERAGE
4.29 AVERAGE
This book devastated me as a child. I never understood how the boy could abuse and take advantage of the loving tree so callously. It wasn't fair, it still isn't fair, but it happens every day. And aren't kids books supposed to be happy after all?? The giving tree is anything but happy, though people may take many lessons from the short and seemingly simple book.
Reading this book as a father, it hits different. As a child we avoid the evils of the world and as parents we try to shield our children from them. Kids should be happy and have fun and not have to think about a tree self-mutilating itself just to please a boy she loves that fails to reciprocate the love in any way. But maybe rather than avoiding the book like I did because it made me sad, we should teach our children to never be as selfish as the boy and to always be as loving as the tree. My daughter is still too young to understand the book, but I read it to her because I am excited to share books with her and discover what she comes to think of them. And as a father and a husband I understand what it is like to be a tree who would cut off all his branches to please and provide for the ones I love.
Reading this book as a father, it hits different. As a child we avoid the evils of the world and as parents we try to shield our children from them. Kids should be happy and have fun and not have to think about a tree self-mutilating itself just to please a boy she loves that fails to reciprocate the love in any way. But maybe rather than avoiding the book like I did because it made me sad, we should teach our children to never be as selfish as the boy and to always be as loving as the tree. My daughter is still too young to understand the book, but I read it to her because I am excited to share books with her and discover what she comes to think of them. And as a father and a husband I understand what it is like to be a tree who would cut off all his branches to please and provide for the ones I love.
reflective
fast-paced
The tree is so generous but the human is the worst. Is the book an analogy of how awful humans are to nature?
The kids used to make me read this, just to see me cry every time. Little sadists.
A book about a boy that is apparently a pathalogical taker and a female tree that constantly gives him whatever he wants without any boundaries whatsoever in order to keep him with her until finally the little boy becomes an old man and the tree becomes a stump and then he sits on her "and the tree was happy". If someone tries to tell me that this is a beautiful example of the mother/child relationship I will LOSE IT. And probably never have children. Way to introduce some messed up relationship models into early childhood Shel. Ick.
While it’s a touching story, it also makes us think about how important it is to set limits and take care of ourselves. We should love others, but we also need to love ourselves.
