The Giving Tree; A Boy Named Shel

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

 Shel Silverstein describes his book The Giving Tree, as a story about a boy who is friends with a tree. The tree is a female, which is significant of something (but I don’t know what that is). When he is little, the boy and the tree are very close to each other. They play together, but then, the boy grows older. There are many times throughout the story, where the tree is sad because the boy does not visit her. The boy occasionally comes back to the tree, which makes her happy, but he cannot do what he used to do (climb her branches, etc).   Because of this, the tree continually gives parts of herself to the boy. For example, she tells him to cut down her branches to make a house for himself.  Shel Silverstein has described this book as being about one who takes and one who gives.  In the end of the story, though, the tree does not give the boy anything to take. Instead, she lets him sit on her stump because he is old and needs to rest. The Giving Tree is a sad story because the boy and the tree are away from each other for long periods of time, but the boy always comes back to the tree.

A Boy Named Shel by Lisa Rogak

Shel Silverstein had a really interesting life.  His father was unsupportive of him because he wanted his son to join the family business. According to Lisa Rogak’s biography on Shel Silverstein, A Boy Named Shel, Shel’s father felt that Shel was wasting his life drawing cartoons, reading books, etc.  Shel and his father fought with each other constantly. Later in the biography, Shel is quoted as saying (after his father has died) that he thinks about him every day, misses him, and loves him.   Throughout the book, Lisa Rogak says “he said” or “Shel said” or she said.”  It gets really repetitive when she does this. In addition, she never met Shel Silverstein; she uses the things he said from interviews she did with people who knew him.  She explains in the introduction to the biography that some of Shel’s friends refused to be interviewed by her. It seems to me, though, that she was able to interview many of his friends.  In addition, she repeats herself a lot. For example, she states many times that Shel Silverstein was not attractive, but was able to attract a lot of women, which was something he could never understand.  In Lisa Rogak’s biography, she would mention someone, tell the reader who they are, and then not mention them again for a long time. She would then reintroduce them, but the reader had already forgotten about who they were. In other words, she uses too many quotes. Lisa Rogak seemed to focus too much on the negative aspects of Shel Silverstein’s life: his relationship with his father, the deaths of his parents, friends, and daughter, the trouble he had with his teenage son, the way he would treat people, etc.  In my opinion, her biography is interesting and readable, but it is not a biography that praises him all the time.