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Given that it's Shel Silverstein, I wouldn't make the assumption that you should take it at face value. That doesn't mean that people don't, though.

OK, I hadn't come across the author in any other context, so I had a look at Wikipedia and it turns out that, as well as other children's books, he has also written an adult parody of a child's A-Z. But if The Giving Tree were intended as parody, as a sort of Happy Tree Friends but with psychological damage instead of gore, it's certainly not marketed like that -- it's marketed as a straight-up-and-down small child's picture-book, and most of the Amazon reviews (and all the reviews quoted on the book itself) rather alarmingly describe it as heartwarming, touching, etc. without any apparent ironic intent.

Peter