Christmas Farm by Mary Lyn Ray

I love Christmas and I loved how the character "Wilma" decided that Christmas began whenever she chose the right Christmas tree and put it into her home. I always put my Christmas tree up right away after Thanksgiving and can't wait to decorate and get ready for the season. The images in this book by Barry Root were beautiful and went with the text very well. They use of paints made the landscapes in the book come alive. Wilma decided that she had grown petunias all of her life and wanted to start to grow something else. She decided to grow evergreen trees in her backyard for those people who didn't have a back hill like she did to pick a Christmas tree. Wilma has the neighbor boy help her plant the trees on her land like he had helped her grow the sunflowers and petunias in the past. This book was great to show children how long it takes for some plants to grow. Some children are only exposed to the growth of vegetables in their backyard or the flowers in their garden, but this book shows that for the evergreens to grow to the size needed to be a Christmas tree they took many seasons and several years! I also found this book interesting because the farmer in the book was a woman. Almost all books portray farmers or planters to be men and this book rids that stereotype.