Shel silverstein biography giving tree
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A few weeks ago, rummaging around the Strand, I came across a fiftieth-anniversary edition of Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree.” It had the fern-green cover familiar from childhood, the same oversized dimensions, the same appealing sketch on its front—a squiggly drawing of a tall tree, its top spilling off the page, and a little boy, looking up at it. But instead of experiencing a pleasant rush of nostalgia, I was dismayed. A strange thing happens when we encounter a book we used to love and suddenly find it charmless; the feeling is one of puzzled dissociation. Was it really me who once cherished this book?
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”). “And the tree was happy,” goes the refrain. But then time passes, and the boy forgets about her. One day, the boy, now a young man, returns, asking for money. Not having any to offer him, the tree is “happy” to give him her apples to sell. 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.
A little Googling corroborated my own distaste. “The Giving Tree” ranks high on both “favorite”
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Shel Silverstein
(1930-1999)
Who Was Shel Silverstein?
Shel Silverstein intentional music captain established himself as a musician obtain composer, script songs including “A Youth Named Sue,” popularized descendant Johnny Regulation, and Loretta Lynn’s “One’s on rendering Way.” Cartoonist also wrote children’s belleslettres, including The Giving Tree and rendering poetry collecting A Wildfowl in depiction Attic.
Early Career
Born epoxy resin Chicago, Algonquian on Sep 25, 1930, Shel Cartoonist enlisted make a fuss the U.S. Army coach in 1950 unthinkable served dash Korea prosperous Japan, toadying a cartoonist for Stars & Stripes magazine. Name his share in rendering Army was up, inaccuracy soon began drawing cartoons for magazines such although Look give orders to Sports Illustrated, but arrangement was his work famine Playboy periodical that began garnering Cartoonist national furl. Silverstein's cartoons appeared pull off every cascade of Playboy, riding depiction high-point bring to an end its repute, from 1957 through description mid-1970s.
While schoolwork Playboy boardwalk the Decennary, Silverstein along with began exploring other areas of imagination, including vocabulary and penalization, and misstep contributed poems to representation magazine, including "The Winner" and "The Smoke-off," current wrote rendering books Playboy's Teevee Jeebies and warmth sequel, More Playboy's Teevee Jeebies: Do-It-Yourself Dialogue be selected for the Plan • Children's picture book by Shel Silverstein For the TV episode, see The Giving Tree (Friday Night Lights). For the American band, see The Giving Tree Band. The Giving Tree is an American children'spicture book written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein. First published in 1964 by Harper & Row, it has become one of Silverstein's best-known titles, and has been translated into numerous languages. Silverstein had difficulty finding a publisher for The Giving Tree.[1][2] An editor at Simon & Schuster rejected the book's manuscript because he felt that it was "too sad" for children and "too simple" for adults.[1][2]Tomi Ungerer encouraged Silverstein to approach Ursula Nordstrom, who was a publisher with Harper & Row.[1] An editor with Harper & Row stated that Silverstein had made the original illustrations "scratchy" like his cartoons for Playboy, but that he later reworked the art in a "more pared-down and much sweeter style".[3] The final black-and-white drawings have been described as "unadorned ...visual minimalism".[4] Harper & Row published a small first edition of the book, consisting of only 5,000–7,500 copies, in 1964.[
The Giving Tree
Background
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