A modern day fable. A lifetime in 10 minutes.
Upon watching this, reading on Shel Silverstein and rereading the story, something clicked.
Of course the art style is amazing and the use of negative/white space creates so much emotion and emphasis, but beyond that this is a story that feels like it’s saying so much about relationships, growing old, happiness, emotion and toxicity but in the end, the story is so simple that it is almost impossible to scrutinize.
It’s too easy to try and analyze and pick apart this when in reality I think that the best way to put it is how Shel himself describes the book. His only ever words said about The Giving Tree were:
“it’s a relationship between two people; one gives and the other takes”
And that’s all it is.
This read-aloud and accompanying animation do a lot to intensify the feeling Silverstein originally intended for, especially the sound and the fact that it’s from 1973. It’s a story that is timeless, and everything about it is beautifully done in my opinion. I know it had a controversial history but this for me is still the greatest ‘children’s’ book I have read.
“and the tree was happy”
Nice.
A modern day fable. A lifetime in 10 minutes.
Upon watching this, reading on Shel Silverstein and rereading the story, something clicked.
Of course the art style is amazing and the use of negative/white space creates so much emotion and emphasis, but beyond that this is a story that feels like it’s saying so much about relationships, growing old, happiness, emotion and toxicity but in the end, the story is so simple that it is almost impossible to scrutinize.
It’s too easy to try and analyze and pick apart this when in reality I think that the best way to put it is how Shel himself describes the book. His only ever words said about The Giving Tree were:
“it’s a relationship between two people; one gives and the other takes”
And that’s all it is.
This read-aloud and accompanying animation do a lot to intensify the feeling Silverstein originally intended for, especially the sound and the fact that it’s from 1973. It’s a story that is timeless, and everything about it is beautifully done in my opinion. I know it had a controversial history but this for me is still the greatest ‘children’s’ book I have read.
“and the tree was happy”
Nice.
