The Giving Tree

by Shel Silverstein

Book Overview

From Shel Silverstein, New York Times bestselling author of Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic, comes a poignant picture book about love and acceptance, cherished for over fifty years.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060256664
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Bedtime must have!

I read this book as a child and loved it. My son who is in 2nd grade loves it more than I did, it is a bedtime must! Thought provoking for little and big minds alike. All around wonderful book and great for budding readers!!

Mildew

This book came today and has gotten wet at some point. The pages are stuck together and it has mildew in it. I’m pretty disappointed that it was shipped this way.

Excellent engaging book for a youngster. Lesson easily learned!

I gave this book, with cd included, to my 5 year old granddaughter. She loves it, a lesson learned, as do her parents having the book read to her.

Great bedtime story~

Even as an adult, i still like to re-read this to myself. Its a bit depressing but i get this oldly nostalgic feeling, remembering the first and well only time my mom read it to me as a kid. I think i hate how depressing it is that i unironicly relate to the tree.

A book about a boy exploiting a female tree. Something to think about.

I wanted to edit my previous comment but I couldn't figure out how to do it. To add to the review talking about this book as a story about exploitation, I have a question I really want people to think about. If the tree was depicted as a male, and it was a little girl and not a little boy who kept asking the tree for everything it had until she killed the tree, would people still view this as a beautiful story? How would the interpretation be different?

I despise this book

I truly find this book appaling. It is precisely as Susie said in her review. A story of abuse. Please do not teach your children to think this way! There are so many better books about sharing, giving, replenishing, etc. Go buy "are you a cheeseburger?" Instead. It is such a sweet, heartwarming story.

So good I had to buy it again

I bought this book for my classroom. One student loved it so much that I gave it to him, so I have to buy it again.

I hated this book, so horrible

The kid swallowed the tree until the death and beyond.

Great book!

This was one of my favorite books as a child .

An Age Old Classic

I read this to my son the other day. I suppose it was good for me to read it to him as I never realized how sad and depressing it was. It invoked a lot of thought in me as I read it to my son. I doubt he'll really understand it, for a child his age, but I think I understand why this author was so famous in my youth. The books he wrote, while simple in nature, invoked a lot of thoughts and feelings from both a child and an adult. I couldn't help but feel for the tree, even if she was willing to just give to the boy without consideration for herself other than short lived happiness. It makes me wonder if I do that myself from time to time. I suppose, there are lessons to be learned from this author. He had a great mind.

Book in very bad condition- don’t order.

This book came with writing all over in the pages to where two markers are so marked up they can’t be read. Will be donating and ordering a brand new copy.

Change this when you read it to a child...

The tree is referred to as "she" and the boy as "he", and the book gives a moral lesson; as the tree gives "herself" away and is destroyed, the boy thrives. Is this the lesson we want our children to have? Read it with both tree and boy as masculine, and the gender problem goes away. If other adults are to read the book, write the change onto the pages, so the reading will be consistent with each other.

Conflicting ideas

Although a classic story, I have never liked this book as I see it as a user and abuser. Take everything they’ve got; take everything you can get without replenishing or giving in return. I’m probably to only reader who read it that way.

Disappointed

I purchased this book for my nephew and when it came I immediately noticed that it did not have a cd in it. Also the book was extremely bent on the lower right side..

The perfect lesson for children

This book is one of my childhood favorites. As a child, I remember loving the story, but now as a mother of three I love it even more. This is such a sweet book and teaches children the most beautiful lesson they will need to learn in life. Simple pictures yet beautiful enough to capture the story. My children love this story just as much as I did and I hope in the future they will read it to their children.

This is a must for everyone- children and adults alike

This cautionary tale helps to drive home the point of selfishness and the slow realization of how not to take others for granted.

Wonderful Book!!!!

This is a wonderful book! It is a great read to me, or read with me book! It offers a unique perspective on giving. It teaches that without balance there is no reward in giving for either the giver or the receiver. It shows the child that by taking without limits brings no happiness, and only creates a hunger for more. It also teaches the child that giving without limits has it's consequences to the giver. Overall it is a great story with a good moral lesson. My children absolutely loved this book! It will remain on our bookshelf for a long time to come!

A cautionary tale?

I read the same symposium that someone else mentioned hereIt set me to thinking about this book (which I still love) in ways Ihadn't before. If you look at this story as the boy's story and not the tree's, it's possible to see it as a cautionary tale. Remember, the Tree keeps saying, "Take this or that, and then you will be happy." But after chidhood, does the boy ever seem happy? Even after he's attained the wife and family he's looked for, he wants to build a boat to sail away, being "too old and sad to play". (Although, in all fairness, maybe tragedy took his spouse from him.) At the end, he looks dejected and worn. Could Shel have been issuing a warning that anyone who does nothing but take will never be truly content? Perhaps if the boy had learned to give in return, he would have had a more contented life.Although I do see the boy as finally learning his lesson toward the end. When he returns to the stump at the end, he has to know that the tree has nothing left to give. But he is finally ready to give the tree the only thing she ever asked of him...companionship. I kinda see in the old man's face a realization of what he's done and a repentance.There's another metaphor for this as well...the metaphor of parent to child. How many children never see or appreciate the sacrifices their parents have made for them till it is too late, or almost too late? This could have been another warning Shel was issuing. END

Never a book so simple can touch so many.

You might think I am silly, I am a 26 year old guitarist in a metal band, and in the professional wrestling biz. And if there is one thing that rarly happenes to me is something that would make me cry. One day, I was at a Walmart with a friend of mine, and as he was scanning through the Hot Wheels (he collects them), I was roamin through and decided to pick up a book that was sitting on on a rack near the board games aisle, that one is none other than "The Giving Tree". So so I decided to scam through it then somehow I started to carefully read it. Then those words and pictures started to touch me. I finished reading it and went home. That book was in my mind for a good long while. Then as I came in to this website, and read those reviews about a book so beutiful I started to cry. That story is a type of vision I cannot shake off. This is the most touching book I have ever read. Something so simple, but yet it touched this Gen Xer pro wrestler. Get this book, I guarantee it will touch you.