The Giving Tree

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Summary: The story of life.
Review: I give this as a gift for all the weddings I go to. My hope is that we all learn that in life if we are to be happy we must learn that it is in giving that we find the happiness we desire.

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Summary: a personal reply
Review: I have a personal acquantance with this lovely book. For five long, glorious years, I dated this beautiful woman. We were very much in love, although it seemed that I was the one who tried the hardest to make sure she was happy. After a while, our relationship started to disintigrate, as all things of wonder usually do. I tried harder and harder to make things right, although it was more like a force of nature tearing us apart. I gave and I gave and she took and she took and she tried to give something back but, perhaps, it was well beyond her capacity at that point when things were somehow ruined. As we split, over a dark and miserable Christmas, one of my gifts was this book, with a very personal inscription written inside. It began, "To (---), my giving tree . . ." This showed absolute understanding not only of our lives and our relationship for so long (she was abandoned by her parents at 18 and I, a few years older, took her in and saved her life) and also a beautiful understanding of the message of this book: Love is cruel and there can only be one victor, no matter how much emotion is reciprocated. All things die in nature, be it a person, a plant, a flower or a feeling. Everything ends.

I wish to thank my anonymous ex-girlfriend for this lovely gift. It helped me through many of the darkest hours of seemingly perpetual lonliness.

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Summary: A Wonderful book about a boy and a tree
Review: My daughter loves this book. When she read it to me I got a little misty. Shel not only speaks to children in his books but reminds the adults what being a child was like. This book was introduced to my daughter by her first grade teacher. For a child who had trouble reading to be so interested with his books is a blessing.

Rating:
Summary: Great for all ages.
Review: "The Giving Tree" is a wonderful piece of literature for all ages. This is not just for the children, but there are lessons in it for all age groups. The child in us sees the story as just a tree and a child. However, the adult reader can apply this to real life relationships and can identify with both the boy and the tree at different points in our lives.

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Summary: made me cry with joy
Review: this book amazed me at the way it almost was real. like a mother doing for her child. it was truly an outstanding book that i as a parent will cherish and hand down to my child.

Rating:
Summary: Provocative
Review: Indeed, Shel Silverstein has left little clue as to his intent in telling this story, allowing us to take it as we read it, and interpret it no doubt relative to who we are.

There was a symposium on the book which I found with a web search. It offers insights I'd probably never have seen, and really opened my eyes to the broad implications this story has.

Not all the lessons are nice and sweet and lovely - some are dark and ominous. All are worth reading, and all contribute to my appreciation of the message(s) from The Giving Tree.

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Summary: The way I see it.
Review: My name is Adrienna Grace Knox, and I am 17 years old. I give Shel Silverstein all the honor that I have. He was a great man. No, he didn't rescue a damsel in distress, save the world, or become President of the United States. But in a sense, he did save the world. He gave us eyes to see from a different point of view. We haven't lost our stump if we ourselves become stumps. That is the ephemerality. That is what lives. I just wish I could have simply shaken his hand.

The true measure of life is how long you exist after you're gone. -Garth Brooks-

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Summary: My first grade memory
Review: I give Shel Silverstein all the honor that I have. We have lost a great man. I am 17, and graduating this year. When I was in first grade, we performed this book in a skit. That has stayed with me ever since then, and it always will. I just wish I could have simply shaken his hand.

Rating:
Summary: amazing, touching and wonderful
Review: I first read this book as a young boy and was always drawn back to it. I t wasn't until I was in my mid-20's, when I happeneded upon it in a bookstore and bought a fresh copy, that i realized what the author was saying. i remember reading in the bookstore and crying at the end. It was the first book i gave my daughter and we sit and read it over and over. She asks questions about the tree and I do my best to explain it to her. Mr. Silverstein has given us a wonderful gift, a story open to interpreation and lush in its simplicity. Truly a treasure.

Rating:
Summary: Deeply powerful
Review: I had read and treasured The Giving Tree as a child, but I had largely forgotten it when I discovered a copy in a children's book store last year. I picked it up and showed it to my friend. "Look," I said. "I remember this book. What a cute story it was." We read it together, in the bookstore, for the first time in many years.

I nearly cried. What I remembered as a cute and slightly silly children's story is in fact an extraordinarily powerful parable of life and faith. The wisdom and simple power of this book still holds, even after all these years. We have lost a very fine author who wrote some of the greatest children's books in our language.