“Well,” said the tree, 
straightening herself up 
as much as she could,
“well, an old stump is good
for sitting and resting.
Come, Boy, sit down.
Sit down and rest.”

And the boy did.

And the tree was happy.
                                               from The Giving Tree
                         written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein
                                                   HarperCollins, 1964
   
    It was right after I posted last week’s blog that I discovered the United States Postal Service is issuing a stamp honoring Shel Silverstein and his book The Giving Tree. Imagine my surprise. I had just quoted from that book.
    Many picture books, old and new, are thought-provoking, silly, informative, or, best of all, some combination of all three. Here’s a list of some my favorites in the order they jumped into my brain. Maybe some of your favorites are on this list, too.

• The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd
• “The Sneetches” written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss
• Harold and the Purple Crayon written and illustrated by Crockett Johnson
• My Blue is Happy written and illustrated by Jessica Young
• Sam and Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen
• After the Fall written and illustrated by Dan Santat
• Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming, illustrated by G. Brian Karas
• Honeybee by Candace Fleming, illustrated by Eric Rohmann
• Bloom Boom! written and photographed by April Pulley Sayre

Even though it’s considered a children’s classic, The Giving Tree is not on my list.                    
    On the face of it, the story is about a tree who loves a boy. First he climbs up and takes her leaves and eats her apples. Then he plays in her branches. When he’s older, he asks her for money. She offers her apples for him to sell. When he asks her for a house, she offers her branches to build with, and when he wants a boat, she offers her trunk. “And so the boy cut down her trunk and made a boat and sailed away. And the tree was happy … but not really.” 
    When the boy came back for the last time, the tree was nothing but a stump. The boy sat down and rested.
    I could mention Silverstein’s diction, reminiscent of Biblical passages. I could mention the apple in the Garden of Eden, which was probably a fig. Some people say two trees lived in the Garden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fig tree was probably the second (if the two trees were different). I could mention the Golden Apple of Greek mythology. Or the poisoned apple in the fairy tales the Grimm brothers collected. But Shel Silverstein was not telling any of those stories. He never said what his story meant, but in a rare 1978 article for the New York Times, he he said “happy endings create an alienation” in a young reader. They will wonder why their own life isn’t happy like that. 
    The ending of The Giving Tree is anything but happy. A boy gets older, but never grows up. He abuses Nature in the guise of a hapless tree. She accepts the abuse wrought on her by the boy for her whole life. She doesn’t learn anything either. She has no boundaries, no love or respect for herself. 
    The relationship is unsustainable. It is incredibly sad.  
    When USPS publicist, Eric Alper, let the public know about the upcoming release, I bet he was surprised at the comments he received. They covered the whole spectrum from love to hate. His comment box overflowed with people’s memories of reading and being read to. 
    The Giving Tree has been used as a model of altruism and used in sermons promoting generosity. It has also been read as a cautionary tale, one with the inevitable sad ending that comes to people who take and don’t give back. It is a warning about what will happen to Earth if gratitude and reciprocity are ignored. 
    So maybe The Giving Tree has earned the right to be called a classic. It generates strong feelings. It stands up to many readings and re-readings. It provides plenty of food for thought and ample room for discussion. 
    I used The Giving Tree as a read-aloud when I taught about trees in my Sunday School classroom. Year after year, I had interesting conversations with Kindergarteners about how love means more than giving someone stuff. We talked about the good feelings generated by selfless giving and the good feelings we get from receiving something we love and especially wanted. We talked about what boundaries are and the importance of giving thanks and giving back.
    The boy in Shel Silverstein’s classic never grows up. The tree calls him “Boy” even in his last appearance as a very old man. He never learned Nature’s Law of Reciprocity, that taking and taking and not giving back is unsustainable. 
    He sounds like a modern human. 
    Maybe the USPS’s choice is an unwittingly wise one, after all. 
                       -—stay curious! (and remember to give back)

And then one day
the boy came back
and the tree shook with joy
and she said, “Come, Boy,
climb up my trunk
and swing from my branches
and be happy.”
                                              from The Giving Tree
                        written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein
                                                Harper & Row, 1964
    While not a grammarian in the true and complete sense of the word, my mom was well-spoken and used good grammar. She expected nothing less from my sister, brother, and me. Words, sentences, phrases  either sounded right to me or they did not. 
    Using they to refer back to a singular antecedent (That boy didn’t finish their assignment) didn’t sound right. And mostly it wasn’t, except that it really was, historically.
    The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) cites an example from a medieval romance (dated 1375) that refers to an unnamed man “who hurried . . . till they drew near . . . where William and his darling were lying together.”
    In the 18th century, grammarians believed that English grammar should closely follow Latin grammar. In that case, a singular pronoun must refer to a singular noun. But English is a Germanic language, not Latinate. The teaching stuck, though. And, until very recently, singular they was generally not accepted.
    Back in the 17th century, the plural you began to replace thee, thou, and thy. As late as 1660, George Fox (founder of Quakerism) labeled anyone a fool who substituted thou for the singular you. He wrote a whole book about it. 
    Language changes slowly, but it changes. Now we understand you as singular or plural. I will meet you at 10 can be addressed to a special someone or to a whole group. We need context to understand the meaning, except in some parts of the South, where the difference is noted by y’all (singular) and all y’all (plural).
    They is following a similar pattern. According to grammarly.com, Merriam-Webster and the American Heritage Dictionary have joined the OED in accepting singular they in formal writing as well as informal. The APA’s (American Psychological Association) style manual is used by journalists and scholars in many disciplines. The APA adopted singular they in 2019.
    Even so, in Tennessee as recently as 2016, after the Diversity Office at the University of Tennessee suggested that teachers ask their students, ‘What’s your pronoun?’ because some students might prefer a … nonbinary pronoun … like singular they, the Tennessee state legislature passed a law banning the use of taxpayer dollars for gender-neutral pronouns, despite the fact that no one knows how much a pronoun actually costs.” (OED blog)     
    People who want to be inclusive, or respectful of other people’s preferences, use singular they. Those who stick with the awkward he or she, or himself or herself, or s/he are labeled “out of date.” Using male pronouns to refer to any non-specific person is confusing at best, and sexist at worst. In today’s quote, Shel Silverstein wanted to emphasize the feminine quality of care-taking by calling his tree she. Here’s a short tangent. Although I like his poetry, I have some serious issues with The Giving Tree. Maybe enough for another post!
    And except for when we know the gender of a non-human, say our pets, mostly we use the non-gendered it. Which is why Silverstein’s she catches the reader’s (and listener’s) ear. It’s out of the ordinary.
    Traditionally, singular they was used to describe someone whose gender was not known or not important. For example, In a fit of rage, the child broke all their crayons. It doesn’t matter whether the child is a boy or girl. We readers don’t even know their(!) name. 
    The current, different use of singular they refers to a known person who chooses a non-binary pronoun for their(!) own personal reasons. Just as each of us claims a social identity, we can also affirm a particular pronoun. It can be he or she (and their several forms: her, him, hers and his), but it doesn’t have to be. Singular they evens the playing field, so to speak. Everyone can be referred to with the same pronoun: they. It’s inclusive. It’s egalitarian. It’s grammatically correct. The problem of a gender-neutral singular pronoun is solved in a single word: they. 
    We’re not alone. Most modern languages are also grappling with singular non-gendered pronouns. Here's a discussion and a handy chart from Babbel, the language-learning site. 
    Singular they still sounds “funny” to my overly-trained ears. I know, though, that just like re-training myself to use only one space after a period at the end of a sentence, “Children . . . they” and “she . . . they” will sound and feel better with each use. 
    Of course, rewriting a sentence to avoid a pronoun is always an option. Everyone raised their glass to language’s evolution! can become They all raised their glasses to language’s evolution!
    Huzzah! 
                                      -—stay curious! (and inclusive)

    This wasn’t how things were done on the island of Habit. There was supposed to be a schedule. A routine. An order to things.
    Otherwise, anything could happen.
                                        from: The Creature of Habit
                                         written by Jennifer E. Smith
                                           illustrated by Leo Espinosa 
                                           Random House Studio, 2021

    I used to bite my nails. Years and years later, when my girls were past their babyhoods, I noticed I had quit. What a surprise! I never thought about biting my nails, although, truth be told, if I did become aware I was doing it, I didn’t always stop. One day, though, I noticed my nails were not ragged. And they were growing. I got some polish and started experimenting with colors. It took a long time to find one I liked. 
    I didn’t intend to bite my nails. I didn’t intend to stop biting them. It was a habit, then it wasn’t.
    That got me thinking. What is a habit? Where does it come from? How can we get rid of the ones we don’t like?
    According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “[a] habit is any regularly repeated behavior that requires little or no thought and is learned rather than innate. The behavior becomes more automatic with each repetition” until all that brain activity used to do the action switches to automatic. Like washing up after dinner, making my bed, brushing and flossing, those things I do with no fuss or feathers.        
    I’ve lost count of how many times I resolved to exercise, though. I was successful (for a little while) dancing along to the oldies on my old VCR. I walked (for two years, then quit cold turkey) with two friends of mine at 6 a.m. so I could get to work on time. I went to a gym (until COVID-19 closed it down). In this new year, I need a habit, not a resolution.  
    Resolutions can be wishy-washy. Building a habit starts with a goal. My older daughter told me about SMART goals years ago when she was studying to be a teacher. Each letter stands for a quality of the goal.
    Specific
    Measurable
    Attainable
    Relevant
    Time bound    
    So for example, I could say “I will log 5,000 steps every day for one week. Next Wednesday I’ll check in with myself to see if I was successful. (My week starts on Wednesday—I know it’s odd, but it works for me.) Then a re-do for the next week, and the next, and the next, but I’m getting ahead of myself. 
    My goal meets all the SMART criteria. I’ll keep track with my (old, unused) smiley stickers that have been waiting in my drawer for such a good purpose.
    According to a Healthline article, a new habit is easiest to form when it’s connected to a cue. Get in the car, put on your seatbelt. Walk into the kitchen first thing in the morning, click on the Mr. Coffee. Rinse my coffee cup, read in my green chair. Oh, wait, that’s what I want to change! Two more components will help my success: a plan and consistency.
    Re-frame. Rinse out my coffee cup, get dressed. 
There’s my cue: rinse my cup. 
And my plan: get dressed. 
And my consistent time-frame: When I finish my coffee.
    How long does it take to form a habit? I found out the answer is, “It depends.” Forming a new habit also requires determination and trust. Some psychologists say 21 days, some say 264 days! The answer depends on each individual’s dedication to the cause and the degree of trust in her/himself that s/he will be successful. 
    This whole thing sounds so do-able until I ask myself, “But when will I find time to read?” So for one week, starting tomorrow, I’ll give my plan a try. Reading will be my after-lunch reward for moving more in the morning.
    What about the habits I don’t like and the strategies to overcome them? Psychologists have lots to say about that, too, but I’ll save it for another time.
    This new year, I hope I did not just resolve to make a habit. I think keeping track will be the key. My calendar sits at the corner of my desk. It will look great with those colorful stickers smiling at me every day! (Starting tomorrow!)
                            -—stay curious! (and try something new)