Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree by Robert Barry

This is a cute classic -- the story of a Christmas tree that keeps getting lopped smaller and smaller, finding it's way around the neighborhood and spreading good cheer. It's a recent addition to our family library and hasn't quite hit the top tier of favorites yet, but the rhyming text is fun to read and gives lots of room for using different dramatic voices. :) In a spirit of complete honesty, the main sticky bit is that it uses a couple phrases once each, 'good heavens' and 'jolly, by golly', which I agree are pretty innocuous on a scale, but I try not to use in toddler level reading. Generally it'd be easy to just drop them, but in this case (to paraphrase Wodehouse) it plays merry havoc with the rhythm of the thing. xD Anyhow, that quibble might not bother other folks at all, and it's obviously stood the test of time and earned its classic status. If I was using the star system I'd say four out of five stars.

Now I didn't grow up on The Muppets (and have no idea if this is a generally known thing), but this book also had the distinction of being adapted for one of their Christmas specials. The episode doesn't have any reference to the real import of Christmas + I always wanna be careful of making 'The Tree' an end in itself, but it's a fun watch; and -- starring none other than Robert Downey Jr. and Leslie Nielsen -- rather entirely nutty. Here's the link if you're interested.

Book for toddlers and up

Reviewed for The Literary Christmas Reading Challenge hosted by In the Bookcase.