Eloisa James recently quoted the final lines of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree on Facebook. She described it as “a book that needs no introduction.” She’s probably right—I’m sure the majority of people who saw those lines recognized them immediately. I’ve heard The Giving Tree quoted in sermons. I’ve seen adults tear up as they reach they end. I’ve seen adults tear up as they refer to the end. Everybody loves The Giving Tree.

Everybody but me.

If you’ve never heard of the book, you may need a quick recap. The Giving Tree is a children’s picture book about the relationship between a boy and a tree. The tree gives the boy everything she can (and yes, it’s a she—Silverstein uses that pronoun specifically). When he’s a child, the boy swings from her branches, rests in her shade, and eats her apples. But as the boy grows older, his demands grow too. When he needs money, he sells her apples (at her suggestion). When he needs a house, he takes her branches to build it. When he needs a boat, he takes her trunk to make it. The tree is perfectly okay with all of this, of course. In fact, she suggests most of it herself. But the boy/man is never entirely satisfied. At the end of the book, he returns, a shriveled old man, and sits down to rest, leaning on the stump that’s all that’s left of the tree. And the final words of the book? “And the tree was happy.”

There are a lot of interpretations of this book, some of them religious (the tree is God) or environmentalist (the tree is Mother Nature). But the interpretation I’ve seen most frequently is that the tree and the boy represent parent and child. More specifically the tree is Mom, constantly giving whatever she has to her children until there’s basically nothing left. But she’s happy because, as Mom, that’s what she’s supposed to do.

And that, my friends, is why I find this book sort of disturbing. Because, no, that’s not what Mom is supposed to do. Mom or Dad either one. What Mom and Dad are really supposed to do is raise a kid who’s not a selfish little snot. Moreover, there’s something troubling about a book that hypothesizes the parent/child relationship in a way that makes the child a kind of emotional vampire and the parents a pair of chumps. There is nothing particularly noble about parents as enablers.

As a point of contrast, consider E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, another book in which the two protagonists (Charlotte and Wilbur) have a parent/child relationship. Charlotte also gives herself to Wilbur, devoting herself to keeping him alive. But in the end, when Charlotte dies, it isn’t because Wilbur has used her up. It’s because Charlotte has reached the end of her life cycle. And she doesn’t leave behind a selfish little pig (literally) who’s learned nothing. She leaves behind a pig who’s now able to stand on his own four feet. I feel annoyed with myself if I tear up over The Giving Tree, but the tears at the end of Charlotte’s Web are totally earned.

So if you want a children’s book that teaches the value of giving and receiving, I’d leave The Giving Tree on the shelf. But Charlotte’s Web? That’s a keeper.