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Read for (Your) Life

Hi everyone – I hope you all are doing well!


Today I have a post for you in celebration of National Reading Month. March is often celebrated as literacy month in honor of Dr. Seuss’ birthday. Because of that, I wanted to do something special for the occasion.


Dr. Lori Stephens is one of my English Professors at SMU. I am in her Ethical Implications of Children’s Literature class, & I have honestly learned so much. Due to my love for literature, it is no secret why I’d want to celebrate National Reading Month. However, I wanted to do it in the best way possible. With Dr. Stephen's insight, knowledge, & perspective on literature as a professor, author, & scholar herself, I believe that we can all celebrate literacy month in the right way!


Because of this, Dr. Stephens & I collaborated on doing a double interview with 5 key questions to ponder on & talk about how a popular child book has various connotations & how we can be more aware of them.



We chose The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.


  • PROFESSOR STEPHENS: I’m glad you’re enjoying the course! One of the most interesting exercises we’ve done in class is The Giving Tree Symposium. The object of this critical thinking exercise is to re-read Shel Silverstein’s classic picture book The Giving Tree from an adult perspective, compare the messages we received as children to the more complicated & nuanced themes we see as adults, & then decide whether or not we’d read this book today to a child we loved. It was fascinating to hear so many thoughtful & varied responses from students.


  • GRACIE: Agreed! Well, let’s get started with answering some questions.


Question 1:

Those that read gather that reading is a powerful act that creates knowledge. Because of this, what is an early book that you remember reading that made you feel more independent?


  • GRACIE: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll was the first book I remember reading that made me feel independent. The way that Alice decided to leave her family, the cultural norms she was exposed to, & the escape from others' desires for her future were inspiring. Although I had a great childhood & happy home life, I remember being fascinated by Alice’s tenacity to escape such constraints, make the separation, & find her own imaginative path. This formative book helped me discover my own “Wonderlands” or pathways to knowledge.


  • PROFESSOR STEPHENS: The first novel assigned to me as a sixth grader was Summer of My German Soldier. I was terrified of tackling a book that included historical elements. Although my mother routinely took us to Nicholson Memorial Library, & we loaded our arms full of books, I was more attracted to shorter chapter books, & my favorite way to read a book was for my mother to read the book to me. My teacher had thoughtfully selected a different novel for each child to read & write a book report on. I was so afraid of the book that I walked right up to the teacher during class & claimed the book would be too hard for me to read. (I laugh now when I think of the audacity.) My teacher smiled & said that she’d picked the book just for me & knew I would love it. And I did. It wasn’t the first novel that I’d read on my own, but it was the first one that I felt was a secret. I was the only one in class reading the book, & my mother didn’t have time to read the book to me with a brand new baby sister in the house. More importantly, I didn’t want my mother to read this novel to me, much less know about the exciting & painful events within it. It was a coming-of-age story that hooked me on reading.


  • GRACIE: That is so fascinating; I have never read that one but from what you described, I may have to now.


Question 2:

Let’s dive into another question: How does reading picture books like The Giving Tree when you’re younger vs. older (different stages of your life) create new perspectives/understandings?


  • PROFESSOR STEPHENS: When I read this book as a child, I was both awed & horrified by the story. At that young age, I was left with ambivalent & intense feelings: there was something both comforting & crushing about the book. I think that’s what Silverstein wanted children to understand, the jerk. I’m kidding. But only about calling him a jerk. Authors know that they’re telling important stories to children, & I think Silverstein taps into fable-like morals for our times. I understand as an adult what he was suggesting about the sacrifices of parents, the selfishness of children, & the completely natural & inevitability of those two natures. It’s horrifying to see – & we often think of those kinds of relationships as toxic between adults – but as a mother myself, I know that parental love isn’t logical. You give & give & give. It’s an addiction to giving, & you wouldn’t be able to do parenting any other way.


  • GRACIE: I remember having this book read to me when I was a child as well. However, I do not recall picking up on the selfish tendencies of the boy & his one-way relationship with the tree. Despite this, when returning to it as a young adult in Professor Stephens’ class, I realized how returning to books at different stages of your life truly can create new perspectives, knowledge, & understandings that I did not realize or could not comprehend at the time. It’s so interesting to have different perspectives about the same book! That’s why I enjoy reading so much: hearing from others that gain new insight that you hadn’t thought of.


Question 3:

Addressing the obvious, why do you think people have such strong reactions to the book?


  • GRACIE: There are undoubtedly strong reactions from scholars, parents, & professionals that relay the implications of a picture book with such themes. Common reasons for this towards The Giving Tree tend to rest & lean towards an objection to the deception of one-sided love, not appreciating your caregivers, hurting nature, etc.


  • PROFESSOR STEPHENS: You can see the variety of reactions on the website The Giving Tree: A Symposium. I think the strongest negative reactions stem from the recognition that people should not exploit others by taking everything they can get from loved ones – every last dime, every last mercy, every last favor – to the detriment of the loved one. And people should not reduce themselves to a “stump” of a person, a shell of a human, because they gave too much. As a culture, we’re aware of the dangers of taking too greedily from our environment & giving too recklessly in relationships. The book becomes a warning, but only to those who have the insight to perceive it.



A few themes depicted in the book are listed below:

  • Growing up

  • Love (selfish vs. not)

  • Motherhood

  • Environmental warning

  • Heroism


Question 4:

Which theme do you see that relates to you most?


  • PROFESSOR STEPHENS: Although I feel the motherhood themes keenly, right now the environmental warning stands out. The grownups in society are acting like the boy in The Giving Tree, taking & taking from nature & not bothering to nurture or love the earth in return. We’ve really messed things up. At the end of the book, the boy is an old man who just wants to sit on the stump, but there’s nothing more to appreciate – no leaves, no shade, no branches. He’s destroyed it all & doesn’t have the awareness of his culpability.


  • GRACIE: I think the theme of growing up to me is the most prevalent theme. As the book continues, it is clear that both the tree & the boy get their own “life cycles” if you will: moving from a child, to a teenager, to an adult, to middle age, & then to an elderly cycle. However, at each of these different seasons in life, the two find each other going through their own growing pains, mentally & physically.


The article, 5 Children’s Books You Didn’t Know Were Banned, talks about The Giving Tree being banned.



“The Giving Tree was banned from a public library in Colorado in 1988 because it was interpreted as being sexist. Some readers believe that the young boy continually takes from the female tree, without ever giving anything in return. As the boy grows up, he always comes back to the tree when he needs something, taking until the tree has nothing left to give him” (Cleveland 1).


This shocking revelation leads us to talk about why books are banned & moreover, what that means for literature. Although some will argue there are purely political reasons for doing so, this epidemic seems to have far deeper roots that are beyond a difference in politics.


Question 5:

What is a book that was banned that surprised you?


  • GRACIE: A banned book that surprised me was The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson. I enjoyed this book so much because it so beautifully speaks to the differences in race, language, characteristics, social class, & identities everyone comes from–even elementary students! A quote that struck me was, “There will be times when you walk into a room & there will be no one quite like you” (Woodson 1). How would this be troublesome for children to read when this statement is so valid & they know it? The mention of a difference in skin color, clothes, the curl of hair, & more gives a voice to young adolescents who may feel isolated by their surroundings & not secure to embrace their uniqueness; the sentiment of a world that makes space for you, in my opinion, should never be banned.


  • PROFESSOR STEPHENS: I was most surprised that Matthew A. Cherry’s Hair Love, a sweet story about a girl & her father preparing for the day by styling her hair with love, was banned in some school districts because parents called the collection of books (that Hair Love was in) about African American children “divisive,” “racist,” & “socialist” (Marshall ISD). These book bans are more than an epidemic of gross stupidity; when books are banned wholesale based on political, religious, or other ideological justifications, it chips away at our democracy bit by bit. Anti-intellectualism & anti-knowledge are the bonfires upon which these books are placed.


Resources & Opinion Pieces about this Issue:


Internet Archive with Banned Books able to borrow for free/donate:


Banned picture books link:


I hope y'all have learned something or at least felt intellectually engaged for National Reading Month. I appreciate having Dr. Stephens' collaboration with this project, and I look forward to what is coming next with A Graceful Space.


Stay tuned - like, comment, or subscribe for updates coming soon!!!

- Grace :)



Bio about Dr. Stephens:

Lori Ann Stephens teaches literature & writing courses at Southern Methodist University. She’s the author of Blue Running (published in the UK, 2021), Some Act of Vision (winner of the Young Adult National Reader’s Choice Award), Pierre François: 5th Grade Mishaps, Novalee and the Spider Secret, & other novels. Her award-winning short stories have also been published in The Chicago Tribune & Glimmer Train Stories, among other literary journals.


Take a look at her website for details about book signing dates & more:



 
 
 

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