October 31, 2009
It's a pity that Madeleine Brand did not heed her own advice and refrain from "throwing yet another (b)log on the towering inferno of mommy blogs out there" [Parenting on the Edge, Oct. 17, and related podcast]. In her commentary about children's books that should be grounded, Brand finds such venerable classics as "The Giving Tree" to be "offensive" because she believes they send a bad message about gender roles. While acknowledging that this book was one she adored and loved as a child, she thinks nothing of slamming this and other classics and depriving the next generation of what have fundamentally become beloved children's literature.

Yes, they are picture books, but each of my children treasured the words and symbolism and to this day remembers fondly the compassion that the books taught. It is only through Brand's perhaps now-jaded eyes that "The Giving Tree" and "Love You Forever" have become gender-bashing stories. These books instead teach the power of unconditional love and forgiveness. There is a good reason why these books have stood the test of time and why new parents are showered with these treasures.

Deborah Aiwasian

Glendora

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I am an avid reader of The Times, and Home is a special treat on Saturdays. However, when I came across Brand's column on parenting, it aroused my ire that she considered "The Giving Tree" an offensive book for children.

This book has such wonderful messages: Nature is forgiving, and that a tree serves until it is a stump is absolutely divine. Let's get real! Life has worse hurdles in store.

Christine Peterson

Woodland Hills

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This is fantastic! I run a children's library and literacy lab at L.A. City College, where adult students training to be preschool teachers learn about good children's literature and how to read to and with children. The podcast is wonderful! I will share it with my students and parents. I have been using "The Giving Tree" and "Love You Forever" as examples of my personal dislikes for the last five years.

Carmela Bosco

Via the L.A. at Home blog

(To see more than 20 additional comments on the blog, go to latimes.com/home and click on "Madeleine Brand" in the Categories box.)

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I like that Brand, as a mother, takes the education through storytelling of her child seriously. I do not, however, like the tendency of readers (Brand included) to reduce the meaning of a book to the narrow confines of their own sociopolitical circumstances.

I tend not to think of Shel Silverstein's books as children's books, and I certainly don't think of them as books on parenting, regardless of the intentions of mothers at baby showers. "The Giving Tree" is the story of one boy and one tree. I'm sure Brand feels that the tree is too selfless, but that's what makes the character interesting. And perhaps more important, the boy-turned-old-man is too selfish. We weep for the tree and despise the man.

If Silverstein wrote a book where the tree rejects the boy/man, stops giving to him . . . well, there isn't much of a story there, and there certainly isn't any pathos.

Jonathan Westerberg

Los Angeles