Shel Silverstein, Stories and Drawings

by Shel Silverstein

boxed set of literary material and drawings.

Hardcover

Expected publication January 1, 9999

About the author

Shel Silverstein was the author-artist of many beloved books of prose and poetry. He was a cartoonist, playwright, poet, performer, recording artist, and Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated songwriter.

Shel Silverstein will perhaps always be best loved for his extraordinary books. Shel’s books are now published in more than 47 different languages. The last book that was published before his death in 1999 was Falling Up

Reviews

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
It has created a sensation- for good reason

There are two things that come to my mind when I read this very good book
The first is not complimentary and the sarcasm is gratuitous, but…there it is-
- Popular books are not necessarily good
- In fact, The Inferno, The Da Vinci Code, although lucrative would not bring the author a Nobel…or perhaps they may

The second thought brought to mind a book of wisdom; I forgot the name –in which wonderful stories have been collected.
From the Orient, if I remember well came the majority of the tales and in particular there was one with a king.
The king wants a book in which he will find all that is most important in the world, whatever he really needs to know- or something like that.
The sages come after some years with a large collection, carried by camels and they offer their work.
- It is too much to read, I have not time for that, I am busy, make it shorter
The wise men come again, with a series of- I do not know 25 volumes- but they are refused again and sent to reduce the workload for the sovereign and come back
Which they did and came with just one book, but even that is more than the monarch can deal with, for he is too old now and requests a resume that he can take.
I may be inventing this, I am not sure if it was all reduced to a phrase like they were born, lived and died.
What is left of this story came from some corner of my –failing-memory as I went through the couple of pages of The Giving Tree in Adobe format- the book is supposed to have 64 pages, but that may be the case for a version with photos or drawings…
I came upon this interesting story as I came across a list of goodreads top 100 popular books.
When I looked it up, Wikipedia said that it is popular and controversial, which attracted my attention.
Popular we can see it is- it may have the most amateur reviews that I have seen, albeit I never look for Harry Potter, Divergent and the like, which certainly dwarf this number.
It is an interesting story and short.
I do not think I have read anything shorter, except perhaps some of my own short productions.
I have read in The Economist that the genre of very very short or flash stories is getting very popular.
And that makes sense in a day and age when people have no time for anything, but check the smartphone…
And so it goes for the very short The Giving Tree which takes, what?
5 minutes to read?
In conclusion, the story is good, but the boy is cruel and we can get why although a big hit, the tale had opponents- I feel sorry for the “happy tree”.