The Giving Tree: A Primer For Terrors To Come

So, if you were like a lot of kids, you probably found yourself reading this book early on. It may have even been your very first book. And everything was cool. You got into it because it was simple, gentle, and safe. Maybe it stirred up a bit of emotion, put a lump in your throat, made you consider tree stumps in a new light. Maybe it caused you to think about how cool it would be to make some drawings like that or even write a book of your own. And then, like a window pane smashing down on your knuckles, all those feelings and ideas were kicked violently aside by your first taste of pure, undistilled terror, because you flipped over the book and-- GAH!!! SHIT ALMIGHTY!!!!-- you saw THIS on the backside... The next time I experienced that kind of deep, primordial shock was when I was 10-years old, watching Alien for the first time on Steve's VCR, and John Hurt leaned over the egg, and the goddamn thing exploded onto his helmet, causing an involuntary lower abdominal release and weeks of subsequent nightmares.