The Giving Tree
Silverstien, Shel. The Giving Tree. Illustrated by Shel SIlverstien. Harper & Row, 1964. 64 pages.
The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstien, told from the perspective of a third person narrator, explores the concepts of giving and receiving through the relationship between a boy and a tree. This book begins by introducing the tree and the little boy that she loved. Silverstien describes the various things that the boy did with the tree (they usually involved him taking something from her), and says that the boy loved the tree. As the story continues, the boy grows older, and more distant from the tree. As he grew older, the boy only wanted money, so the tree began giving up parts of herself to make the boy happy, and then his happiness makes her happy. This vicious cycle of giving and taking continues between the tree and the boy as he grows older, until there is nothing left of the tree but a small stump. At this point, it says that the tree was happy, but not actually very happy. When the boy finally returns as a weak old man, the tree has nothing left to give, except for a seat, which the boy took, and in the end, the tree was happy again because she was making the boy happy.
“And the tree was happy . . . but not really”
This book, written and illustrated by Shel Silverstien, is the definition of simplicity. There is rarely a page with more than a sentence written on it, and each illustration is simple and clean. The drawings are all of only two things, the tree and the boy, and aside from the boy aging and the tree disappearing, not much is changed in each one. Although the images are simple, and the text is not very long either, they work together to portray a more complex meaning to readers. The use of repetition when the author says “And the tree was happy” makes the book easy to follow for young readers, and it also allows them to easily identify the crisis that the tree goes through when the repetition is changed slightly. Because of this book’s visual and literary simplicity, it is a good way to teach children the value of giving through a heartwarming story.
This is one piece of children’s literature that has been greatly debated because of its possible interpretations. This book can teach children the importance of giving to others, showing thanks for what you have been given, and also friendship/relationships. However, this book also portrays the struggles of unconditional love. In this book, the tree is portrayed as a mother-like or god-like character, who is always giving and never receiving, yet she loves the boy unconditionally anyway. This love (agape love), like the love of a mother towards her child, or the love of God towards his people, can sometimes be hard to understand, but this book simplifies it so that even the youngest readers can grasp the meaning.
