Dorling Kindersley (DK) is a British multinational publishing company specializing in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 62 languages. It is part of Penguin Random House, a consumer publishing company jointly owned by Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA and Pearson PLC. Bertelsmann owns 53% of the company and Pearson owns 47%. Spitz, Ellen Handler (1999). Inside Picture Books. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. pp. 142–144. ISBN 0300076029.

Markstrom, Serena (June 18, 2010). "Giving Tree Band Takes Story to Heart". The Register-Guard . Retrieved May 18, 2013. The most powerful interview of the book is with Tom and Sue Klebold, parents of Dylan, one of the two teenagers who carried out the Columbine massacre, and who killed themselves after the shooting. The Klebolds have been vilified on the assumption that they must, surely, have contributed to their son's mental state but there is, Solomon writes, no evidence for it. Of everyone he interviewed, he felt the greatest connection with them. "It would have been better for the world if Dylan had never been born," says Sue of her son. "But I believe it would not have been better for me." It's a timely book; the internet has changed the fortunes of many millennial children who might otherwise have grown up feeling isolated, and, along with their parents, given them communities. "I was determined not to be around folks who saw us as tragic," one exasperated mother of a disabled child told Solomon. "Unfortunately, that included my family, most professionals, and just about everyone else I knew." But online, she had instant access to others in her position. One writer believes that the relationship between the boy and the tree is one of friendship. As such, the book teaches children "as your life becomes polluted with the trappings of the modern world — as you 'grow up' — your relationships tend to suffer if you let them fall to the wayside". [17] Another writer's criticism of this interpretation is that the tree appears to be an adult when the boy is young, and cross-generational friendships are rare. [17] Additionally, this relationship can be seen from a humanities perspective, emphasizing the need for helping each other. [18] Mother–child interpretations [ edit ]The Giving Tree is an American children's picture 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. John Robert Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea, a small town in Essex. He recalled the English suburban culture of the 1930s as oppressively conformist and his family life as intensely conventional. Of his childhood, Fowles said "I have tried to escape ever since." To a smaller yet no less passionate audience, Fowles is also known for having written The Tree, one of his few works of nonfiction. First published a generation ago, it is a provocative meditation on the connection between the natural world and human creativity, and a powerful argument against taming the wild. In it, Fowles recounts his own childhood in England and describes how he rebelled against his Edwardian father's obsession with the “quantifiable yield” of well-pruned fruit trees and came to prize instead the messy, purposeless beauty of nature left to its wildest. a b Bird, Elizabeth (May 18, 2012). "Top 100 Picture Books #85: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein". School Library Journal "A Fuse #8 Production" blog . Retrieved May 18, 2013. In my review, I stated, "...the fact that other such issues have existed and do exist in other countries is not a consideration. Obviously it is a story of a particular place. I only think it is a problem because it is a place that is such a loaded issue for so many people. The author might have given at least some introductory context in terms of other areas of the world....

The problem is this; it was no longer their land. Intransigence will prevent any peace. Both sides have to move to a middle ground, but Israel has no choice, if it wishes to maintain its Jewish identity, but to behave they way it did and will have to continue to do so. Those that do not understand this will wish to doom Israel to extinction. They may even hope for it, as their ultimate goal. In his childhood, the boy enjoys playing with the tree, climbing her trunk, swinging from her branches, carving "Me + T (Tree)" into the bark, and eating her apples. However, as the boy grows older, he spends less time with the tree and tends to visit her only when he wants material items at various stages of his life, or not coming to the tree alone (such as bringing a lady friend to the tree and carving "Me +Y.L." (her initials, often assumed to be an acronym for "young love") into the tree). In an effort to make the boy happy at each of these stages, the tree gives him parts of herself, which he can transform into material items, such as money from her apples when the boy is a teenager, a house from her branches when the boy is a young man, and a boat from her trunk when the boy is a middle-aged man. With every stage of giving, "the Tree was happy". They also encounter colourful characters along the way including Dame Washalot, Silky the Fairy, the Saucepan Man and Moon-face. One college instructor discovered that the book caused both male and female remedial reading students to be angry because they felt that the boy exploited the tree. [26] For teaching purposes, he paired the book with a short story by Andre Dubus entitled "The Fat Girl" because its plot can be described as The Giving Tree "in reverse". [26]This book has been described as "one of the most divisive books in children's literature"; the controversy stems from whether the relationship between the main characters (a boy and the eponymous tree) should be interpreted as positive (i.e., the tree gives the boy selfless love) or negative (i.e., the boy and the tree have an abusive relationship).

While the story of the friendship is optimistic and shows that Israelis and Palestinians can somehow have a dialog, it emphasizes the giant gap between the people.

Both people claimed the same land, Israel, only known by that name since 1948, when it was given to the Jews by a United Nations declaration. However, since the ownership of that land is now and has always been disputed, war is never-ending and fear is a constant companion for all sides considered. Translator: Ioana Miruna Voiculescu. Bucharest: Humanitas, 2015. ISBN: 9789735049676. (Read an excerpt) In 1967, not long after the Six Day War, three young Arabs ventured into the town of Ramla, in Jewish Israel. They were on a pilgrimage to see their separate childhood homes, from which their families had been driven out nearly twenty years before during the Israeli war for independence. Only one was welcomed: Bashir Al-Khayri was greeted at the door by a young woman named Dalia. Bradbury dedicated The Halloween Tree to Man'ha Garreau-Dombasle (1898–1999), a French writer and translator who was the maternal grandmother of the actress and singer Arielle Dombasle and the wife of Maurice Garreau-Dombasle, a French ambassador to Mexico. [2] Illustrations [ edit ] Sandy Tolan is a teacher and radio documentary producer. He is the author of two books: Me and Hank: A Boy and His Hero, Twenty-Five Years Later (Free Press, 2000), about the intersection between race, sports, and American heroes; and The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2006). The Washington Post called the book “extraordinary” and selected it among their top nonfiction titles for 2006; the Christian Science Monitor wrote, “no novel could be more compelling” and proclaimed, “It will be one of the best nonfiction books you will read this year.”Sandy has reported from more than 30 countries, especially in the Middle East, Latin America, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe.