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Summary: word by word, picture by picture - the most touching book
Review: As i have read here, i can see this book affected me like it has so many others. I first read it as late teen-ager, and have read it numerous times since. Each and every time, it is difficult for my wife or I to get to the end without tears in our eyes. We have also given it as a gift, or introduced it to others. A simple book with a hundred messages. - From boy to man we go from enjoyment and appreciation of simple things, and easy gifts of love, to the belief in the "need" of ever more complex things and demands that only make us more desperate, more saddened, and more caught in the illusion of what love, and life, truly is - in a world in which we are told that "taking" and "getting" and "expanding" and "acquiring" is our path to happiness - when it is the opposite that is true. What happens in the book happens around us in life every day. Maybe "The Giving Tree" can help us overcome this - and return to the life of the little boy in a big tree. We will miss you, and your worlds, Shel Silverstein.
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Summary: the book is very very good.
Review: I like this book because I have this book at home and I read it every day. And also I like this book because I like the boy that plays with the tree all of his live. When the boy needed money the tree gave him his apples for money. And when the boy gets old and the tree had nothing to give him all the boy wanted to do is to sit.
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Summary: I can honestly say that this book should be read by everyone
Review: Remember the good ole days when you and your siblings would get together for the bedtime stories? well, this particular book--in so many words--is the greatest book to read over and over and the moral of it all(give on to others...etc.)is in fact, the best part.
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Summary: The zenith work of a great man
Review: Whatever else may be said of Shel Silverstein, this is truly his best, though shortest, book ever. Maybe once in all our lives do we have a chance to expose ourselves so lucidly as Mr. Silverstein has done in the few pages of this book. I grew up with Shel Silverstein poems, had some of my first laughs with him, and even some of my most sincere cries by reading "The Giving Tree". Shel touches this little piece inside ourselves, that missing piece we have all felt at some time. There was never a more comforting voice for children, never a wiser lesson in the fundamentals of being human than is found in this book. And if we had to learn about love and something about the better angels of our nature from a cartoon tree, well that's even better. Thank you Shel, a minion of children-at-heart mourn your passing.
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Summary: The Giving Tree has a lesson for all of us!
Review: This book reminds me of how our Lord gives and gives to us and we take and take without thought for the consequences in our own lives. Very touching and moving...one for all generations and one for all of time! A remarkable fable...thanks Mr. Silverstein!
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Summary: This story will touch your heart and enrich your soul
Review: This has been one of my favorite books to give as a gift over the years. I first received it as a child and am now 29 years old and bawl like a baby everytime I read it. Everyone I have given it to has been profoundly affected by it. A valuable life lesson in the form of unconditional love is told in the simplest of terms. I believe everyone is affected by this book in a positive manner and hopefully if everyone were to find a little bit of that tree in all of us perhaps the world would be a better place.
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Summary: The greatest synopsis of life
Review: When I read that Shel Silverstein had died today I was deeply saddened. As a child I was raised on Silverstein's uncanny poetry that had the power to unlock my imagination and set me free to believe anything. Growing older, the Giving Tree was the perfect juxtaposition for a young man who was skeptical of the world and not quite sure what life was all about. Above all, in many ways the Giving Tree allowed me to come to an understanding of God. As an atheistic teenager I was forced to write about my belief in God for religious school and found Silverstein's The Giving Tree a fine medium in which to bridge my feelings on life with my understanding of God. Take what you may from this simple story, but let it take you to a place of kindness and a feeling of melancholy and happiness that is so rare and special. Silverstein gave us the power to understand, if only ephemerally, that there is goodness, true goodness. Today the world is a bit less lucky for each of us lost a stump to sit on and a friend to hold our hand. -Noah Wintroub
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Summary: His genius was in presenting the questions, not the answers
Review: This book was one of a scant few that, when I was growing up, forced me to consider the author's meaning, the characters' motivations and the moral implications of the tale. This is not the kind of insight earned from examining a children's book with an unambiguous moral or unrealistic portrayals of good and evil. We have lost a fine, fine author.
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Summary: Should be on every bookshelf
Review: My daughter learned how to read on The Giving Tree. When she was about two we took to reading The Giving Tree every night. Within weeks I would just turn the pages as she recited the story because she had memorized it. Later she took to looking at the book and putting the printed word to the words she knew in her head and from there she moved on to Sidewalk & Attic. Now that Mr Silverstein has passed on we can't thank him for what he gave us, but we can make sure that every child has the chance to live in his world. My daughter, who is now nine, cried when I told her that Shel Siverstein had died. After she had gone to bed I found her with her light on reading Falling Up, and that, I think, seemed the way it should be. Like Walt Disney, Dr Seuss, and Jim Henson, he not only made childhood better, he made our children better.
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Summary: Sentimental story with treacherous message.
Review: You'll have to put me down with the vocal minority with a strong negative reaction to this story. I've read and admired Silverstein's children's poetry, but I don't admire this book. The relationship between the boy and the tree is an amazingly accurate metaphor for an abusive relationship -- one side endlessly giving and in the process destroying itself, the other endlessly taking and never being satisfied. I doubt Silverstein intended this parallel, but it speaks loudly and clearly to me. It's not an image I'd want in the mind of a son or daughter of mine as he or she grows up. Paula
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