The Giving Tree
Shel Silverstein (1964)
“Sixty-four pages. No chapters. One of the most argued-over books in American children's literature — a story so simple it splits readers into opposite camps.”
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Thematic connections across eras and genres — books that talk to each other.
The Giver
Lois Lowry
Both ask what a society — or a being — loses when it gives everything away in the service of others' comfort
Where the Wild Things Are
Maurice Sendak
Same era, same deceptive simplicity, same picture-book form — but Sendak's boy comes home to a warm supper; Silverstein's boy sits on a stump in the dark
The Little Prince
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Another children's book that operates as adult allegory about love, loss, and what we destroy in order to possess
Charlotte's Web
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A friend who gives everything including life itself for another — but White names his moral; Silverstein refuses to
Of Mice and Men
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An asymmetric relationship where one party gives everything and the system destroys them anyway — the same structure, at novel length, with a named moral