Unsurprisingly, perhaps, environmental activists rue the boy’s pillaging of the tree and, by extension, the environment. One blog post, “ Why I Hate The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein,” argues that the book encourages selfishness, narcissism, and codependency. “The Giving Tree” ranks high on both “favorite” and “least favorite” lists of children’s books, and is the subject of many online invectives. She is likewise “happy” to give him her branches, and later her trunk, until there is nothing left of her but an old stump, which the old man, or boy, proceeds to sit on.Ī little Googling corroborated my own distaste. Not having any to offer him, the tree is “happy” to give him her apples to sell. One day, the boy, now a young man, returns, asking for money. But then time passes, and the boy forgets about her. “And the tree was happy,” goes the refrain. The beginning of the story is innocuous enough: a boy climbs a tree, swings from her branches, and devours her apples (I’d never noticed that the tree was a “she”).
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