The Giving Tree

I know that many of you probably grew up loving this book, but i'm going to have a go at it anyway.

I enjoyed the poems & musings of Shel Silverstein when i was a child. We had a big hardbound copy of "Where the Sidewalk Ends" that i used to read & laugh at. The drawings were amusing, the poems were clever & funny and dealt with stuff that kids could relate to. As i've grown in age, i still enjoy coming back to that book & some of his other ones too.


Portrait of the author as a terrifying looking young man

But - not "The Giving Tree". THAT book is not one i enjoy. At all. It seems to be about a tree that allows her(?)self to get walked all over by this selfish jerk of a boy (eventually man). When i read it as a kid, i may not have known words like "self-absorbed loser" or "disfunctional relationship" but i sensed that something was up with that book. And i also knew that most of it did not make any sense...how the heck could the man have built a house with an armload of branches? Didn't the kid find it weird that the tree could talk? And wasn't it weird that the tree, after like the first 3 or 4 selfish incidents, didn't go all "Wizard of Oz" tree style on the kid?



So i could go off on this book for hours, but instead, i'll let you watch the following video clip. I found it while googling the title of the book. This woman (Joanie) is funny. She pretty much says just about everything that i've ever thought about this (stupid) book.