Top Duo

I have recently become a fan of Leo Babauta's blog Zen Habits. Among his eloquent posts on simplistic and efficient living are are range tagged books, and it is within these that I found a list of his best all-time children's books. Many of these I have loved and will be adding to my Booktagger shelves to remind me to buy for my son. Two of these I want to highlight as my top duo because of the poignant messages they contain within their superb yet simple images and tales.

The Lorax was read to me millions of times by my father. The Lorax "speaks for the trees, for the trees have no tongues" as the truffela trees are chopped down by all sorts of fantastical machines and made into thneeds. As the trees get chopped down, the creatures suffer, the water gets gluggy and the sky gets smoggy. After the last tree falls and the Lorax and his friends are long gone, a boy is given a seed, an opportunity, so that one day, the Lorax and his friends may come back.

The Giving Tree is a book I only discovered in the past year. It begins with a beautiful relationship between a boy and a tree. Yet, the boy keeps taking, while the tree keeps giving. The generous tree keeps giving until it is a stump, sad as it has nothing left to give. The boy, now an old man returns, but now he has nothing too and only needs a stump to sit on, so the tree is happy and can give some more.