"Something like" can encompass multitudes, so you have to ask follow-up questions. 1) Were you looking for a children's book? Yeah. Yeah, that would work. 2) What is it about The Giving Tree that you are looking for? Well, I'm going to use it for a proposal, so I want a story about life-long love.
Bastard.
The first books I could think of (Lost and Found & Up and Down by Oliver Jeffers) weren't in the store, so I offered him a paperback of Toot & Puddle: Top of the World by Holly Hobbie which wasn't going to be right, but it's a bookseller tactic - buys me a few minutes to look like an idiot staring at spines for inspiration. Because nothing inspires confidence like a slack-jawed bookseller deep in the fugue state of Finding Exactly the Right Book. It's a look. It's not a good look.
As I handed over The Adventures of Beekle the Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat, I was hoping that this was the kind of couple this book would work for. It's about an imaginary friend who has to leave imaginary land and brave all sorts of new worlds and a certain amount of loneliness to find his real friend (who has been waiting for him in her own watchful way). I teared up telling him about it. Which didn't happen when I read this at Storytime. Different audience. Different perspective.
He read. I went back to looking. Registered that we have a lot of books about making friends, and being yourself and adventures and family and travel and dinosaurs, but not so many about life-long friendships (except for the ones about loved ones dying that we can't read because crying at work is a thing).
"This might do it," I heard and walked over to see him holding the book and wiping his eyes. "This is exactly our story."
We're both crying at the bookstore.
I hope his beloved says yes.
Added thought: I first thought of How to Catch a Star, my co-workers thought of Stuck and Lost and Found and The Heart in the Bottle. Left Bank Books booksellers think of Oliver Jeffers when we think of life-long love.
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