The Giving Tree with CD

Description

The Giving Tree turns fifty! To celebrate the anniversary of this classic favorite by Shel Silverstein, this edition features a beautiful metallic green jacket, a commemorative gold sticker, and a CD recording of Silverstein reading The Giving Tree.

Since it was once first published fifty years ago, Shel Silverstein’s poignant picture book for readers of every age has offered a touching interpretation of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another’s capacity to love in return.

Shel Silverstein’s incomparable career as a bestselling children’s book creator and illustrator began with Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back. He’s also the writer of picture books including A Giraffe and a Half, Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros?, The Missing Piece, The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, and the perennial favorite The Giving Tree, and of classic poetry collections such as Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, Every Thing On It, Don’t Bump the Glump!, and Runny Babbit.

Supports the Common Core State Standards.

To say that this particular apple tree is a “giving tree” is a sarcasm. In Shel Silverstein’s popular tale of few words and simple line drawings, a tree starts out as a leafy playground, shade provider, and apple bearer for a rambunctious little boy. Making the boy happy makes the tree happy, but with time it becomes more challenging for the generous tree to meet his needs. When he asks for money, she suggests that he sell her apples. When he asks for a house, she offers her branches for lumber. When the boy is old, too old and sad to play in the tree, he asks the tree for a boat. She suggests that he cut her down to a stump so he can craft a boat out of her trunk. He unthinkingly does it. At this point in the story, the double-page spread shows a pathetic solitary stump, poignantly cut down to the heart the boy once carved into the tree as a child that said “M.E. + T.” “And then the tree was once happy… but not actually.” When there’s nothing left of her, the boy returns again as an old man, needing a quiet place to take a seat and rest. The stump offers up her services and products, and he sits on it. “And the tree was once happy.” At the same time as the message of this book is unclear (Take and take and take? Give and give and give? Complete self-sacrifice is good? Complete self-sacrifice is infinitely sad?), Silverstein has perhaps deliberately left the book open to interpretation. (All ages) –Karin Snelson