The Giving Tree

I intended to buy this book for the kids. Amazon's "Look Inside" feature doesn't work so I opened YouTube and the first page of results is full of readings. The first reading has additional text asking questions to children, presumed listeners, such as "why was the man sad?"

The illustrations are simple line drawings and mostly negative space. At first I thought, hey, this would be a good coloring book, except it's the same simple tree page after page. And then I thought, hey, this would make a good drawing book. The kids can draw all over the book and add whatever they want.

Turns out the book is about a boy growing into a man so old he cannot do anything except sit on the stump of the tree he cut down and then I thought, hey, this book is a total drag.

The kid didn't even build a tree house in it. He didn't find any bird's nests in it. He sleeps on the wrong side of it, crunched inside the acute angle between trunk and ground and not spread out along the obtuse angle. There are no other living creatures associated with the tree. The book is too lonely, too sad, too discouraging for kids. It's Shel Silverstein's swan song, his recognizing his own mortality.  He should have saved some of the wood for his own casket.

The book is for adults. It's a terrible children's book. 

A real children's book would show how useful trees are while showing we need trees while trees do not need us. We need the oxygen produced by trees but they do not need our particular carbon dioxide. In the least, they can do just fine without us while we are greatly diminished without them. 

Maybe I'll buy it anyway. Five stars on Amazon with 2,990 reviews.

What do the one star reviewers say?

* extremely depressing

* The tree gave too much (no boundaries) and at the end, it is a stump and has the boy's buttocks on its face.

* To us, it was sad and lonely. 

* I forgot what a horrible story this is. The tree gives and gives and the boy only takes. It teaches kids to be a doormat in my opinion. I threw it out.

* DON’t BUY! this book describes an abusive relationship, where the boy takes EVERYTHING and only shows up when he is needing to take some more. 

And so on. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. They crack me up. All that makes me want to buy it because it is so perverse. 

They can still color and draw on it. Draw migrants approaching the border in the background. Draw a war in a foreign country beyond the tree. Draw a city encroaching on their little patch. Draw a forest on fire all around them. Draw the house that the guy build right next to the stump. Draw birds flying out of the tree, squirrels climbing all over, insects all over the place, apples rotting on the ground, deer all over the place. It's a great book to stimulate ideas for fleshing it out. 

Like Adult Swim's Robot Chicken did.

Comments to this video are funny. They're not cynical people, they're just hilarious.