When I first heard someone slander Shel Silverstein’s masterpiece, The Giving Tree, I was shocked. One of the greatest books ever written, it chronicles, should you need reminding, the tragic relationship of a boy and the tree who loved him. Initially, she meets his needs with ease: He gathers leaves, climbs her branches, eats her apples, rests in her shade, and the tree is happy. But the boy’s appetites grow unsustainable. He soon strips her of apples (to sell), then branches (for a house), and then takes her body (to make a boat). The book ends with the boy, ancient and bent and weary, resting on her stump.

The slanderers always raise the same basic objection: “What a wretched moral!” The book idealizes an impossibly selfless vision of motherhood or friendship, all give and no take, where true love means sacrificing yourself.