Oh shiz... The Giving Tree horrified me even as a little kid! My mom loved the book, but I couldn't stand to have it read. I thought it was a cruel story, and it made me upset every time. I mean, seriously... little kids view that tree as a person, not an inanimate object! It's basically a story of suicide/murder with consent. Frickin' leech of a boy. Of all the many books I devoured as a child, that one was rarely nibbled, to say the least.