The Giving Tree Reflection

One of my earliest memories is that of my twin sister, Lexie, and me sitting on my parents' bed with my father as he read books to us. I can't quite recall the names of most of the stories he read to us because I was so young, but there was one particular book that clearly stands out in my memory. This book was Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, a classic children's book about a boy that grows up alongside a tree and continues to take advantage of the tree's love for him by taking its resources throughout his life. I reread this book many times throughout my childhood, and despite me not quite grasping the story's message when I was younger, I eventually realized what the actual moral of the story was as I thought about it more and more as I grew up. Due to this, The Giving Tree was one of the first stories that showed me how meaningful literature can be, which ultimately led to me becoming an avid reader in grade school.
I believe I was about four or five years old when I learned how to read. Because I was more advanced than most readers at my age, when I was in kindergarten, I was pulled out of class a couple times a week along with a few other students to do independent reading in the library under the supervision of one of the school's reading aides. Once we finished whatever book we had chosen for ourselves to read, we had to take a short quiz on the book, which was a printed out copy of the quiz from the A.R., or Accelerated Reader, program. A.R. was a program used by my grade schools up until I was in seventh grade that was used to make sure that students were actually reading and comprehending their independent reading. Points were given for passing quizzes on books, and each student had a personal goal set for the amount of points they wanted to earn over the course of the semester. The select few of us that took A.R. tests in kindergarten didn't receive points or set goals, but it was the start to a program that encouraged me to read very often.
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