You’re not the first to say so. We’ve had at least one other thread about it. I thought there were more threads about it, but maybe I’m remember posts in discussions of books with bad messages and things like that. I continue to be very surprised by this interpretation of the book. I always thought it was primarily about love and willingness to give, probably from the point of view of a parent. Also, what’s a boy supposed to give a tree exactly? Water and mulch (which it already gets from nature, otherwise it wouldn’t have survived into treehood)?