My parents were probably not hip enough to read me Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.
You can’t really get more hip, as a writer of children’s books (and “A Boy Named Sue”), than have Johnny Cash introduce you thus: “Sometimes he wears a beard and shaves his head. Sometimes he shaves his beard and wears his head. And sometimes he’s lonesome….”
Alom Shaha is also hip. Richard Dawkins with extra heart is how I’d introduce him, and I’m sticking with that after our reading together. I’m also buying my three-year-old niece and one-year-old nephew a copy of his Young Atheist’s Handbook for Chrismukkah, so that they won’t be able to level the non-hip slur in 30 year’s time against me on whatever new fandanglement replaces blogs and websites.
[Intro tune: Latché Swing]
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I’ve only ever felt sorry for the boy in all my readings of this story, never anger or dislike. To me he clearly missed out.
That’s a really lovely way of putting it Fern. I agree. In some way, we all miss out on whatever he’s missed out on. I too have a lot of empathy + sympathy for him.