The Giving Tree
author of Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic, comes a poignant picture book about love and acceptance, cherished for over fifty years. This classic is perfect for both young readers and lifelong fans. "Once there was a tree...and she loved a little boy." So begins a story of unforgettable perception, beautifully written and illustrated by the gifted and versatile Shel Silverstein. This moving parable for all ages offers a touching interpretation of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another's capacity to love in return. Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk...and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he began to want more from the tree, and the tree gave and gave and gave. This is a tender story, touched with sadness, aglow with consolation. The Giving Tree is a meaningful gift for milestone events such as graduations, birthdays, and baby showers. Shel Silverstein's incomparable career as a bestselling children's book author and illustrator began with Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back. He is also the creator of picture books including A Giraffe and a Half, Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros?, The Missing Piece, The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, and the perennial favorite The Giving Tree, and of classic poetry collections such as Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, Every Thing On It, Don't Bump the Glump!, and Runny Babbit plus Runny Babbit Returns.
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4recommend
13mentions
12people
2014–2025years
31% recommend69% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.
- Books that had a big impact on me as a young kid were 'The Giving Tree', 'The Lorax', and 'The Velveteen Rabbit'. They were hard lessons. None of them taught a just world.
I think those books left such an impression on me because they were tragic and unresolved. There were dozens of other more simplistic moral tales that went in one ear and out the other, I'm sure.
- My personal favorites are Where the Wild Things Are and The Giving Tree. Both stories are very simple, but they flow well and IMHO really grow when read aloud.
- The Giving Tree
- The Giving Tree (by Shel Silverstein) came out in the same year my dad was born. But my parents still read it to me.
I still don't understand why I have such a strong reaction to the book. It feels like the message is "take care of your parents instead of just taking from them".
- > Nuclear has failed for now 70 years to change anything.
Its almost as if nobody tries to do something it doesn't happen, shocking insight.
> It's because it plainly doesn't work.
Except that its actually proven to work and renewables are not proven to work. Because there is actually a major world industrial economy that worked on nearly 100% nuclear and there is not such a nation that runs on only renewables.
So maybe if there is prove of anything, its that one works the other doesn't.
> The plants are reaching their end of life
Complete nonsense ... there are many far older plant operating. Nuclear reactors can run 80-100 years.
> the prototype replacement
Like the innovative Superphénix that was killed of by the Green-Leftis coalition.
> was nationalized as a consequence
France has had 40 decades of the lowest energy prices in Europe and still has very low cost. All the construction cost of the whole nuclear fleet were on the books of the utility and were paid off over decades. If French utility was allowed to charge as much as energy prices in Germany, it would be wildly profitable.
The French state forced them to invested profit from nuclear into solar that hurt their own networks operation and also forced them to cheaply sell bulk nuclear electricity to support fossil and then the utility had to buy that capacity back at a way higher price, losing billions in the process.
France has for 25 years now had governments that didn't like nuclear, they have let go the whole industrial base that built up. The were so spoiled by nuclear that they didn't do any of the basic maintenance and upgrades done in pretty much every country in the world (including ironically Germany). Had they just done so, they wouldn't have had any of the problems they had last year.
France treated its amazing nuclear capacity from the 70/80s like the tree in 'The Giving Tree'. The reality of course is France saved incredibly amounts of money in their health care system because they had 50 years of nuclear rather then 50 years of coal. Nuclear in France was one of the best energy policies ever done by anybody.
> If the world decides to go all in on nuclear it would take decades to decarbonize a tiny percentage of the grid and horrendous costs.
Lets look at a case study, UAE. They decided in 2009 to do nuclear, first plant active in 2020 and finishing 1 reactor a year. So a nation with no nuclear and no experience in 1 year will have 25% nuclear and these plants will last 100 years or more. The could have just continued this and by 2030 the could have 100% nuclear. But this is political.
Let me do some basic math for you. Even at the still high unit prices UAE was charged. Starting in the year ~2000, when Germany really adopted 'Grünewende'. At that point they had 20% of well functioning nuclear. At that point the total cost of going 100% nuclear in Germany, even with a very high very conservative cost of 5 billion $ per plant, for like 250 billion Germany could have gone 100% electric. That is approximately 5% increase in debt to GDP. Realistically it would be much less as data shows that if you are building many of the same plant with the same workforce it gets vastly cheaper. Germany could have done this in 20-30 years no problem, if France can do it so can Germany. This would have guaranteed Germany clean green energy for the next 100 years or more.
The failure of nuclear was and is about politics, not about the technology.
