Wilma decides her garden needs a new beginning, so she orders sixty two dozen balsam seedlings and gets help from Parker, the five year old next door, who is five like the seedlings. They plant them in rows. Then they wait, because that is what a Christmas tree asks of you.

What makes this a counting book without ever announcing itself as one is that Wilma and Parker keep count. How many went in, how many did not make it, how many are finally tall enough to cut. Years pass in a page turn. By the end they are cutting and carrying and sledding trees all December and making change out of a money box, and they have sold three hundred and fifty six of them.

Barry Root paints it the way a northern hill actually looks: the sunflower field gone gold in autumn, the bare back hill under snow, and one spread near the end where every tree they grew is lit in a window somewhere across a dark blue valley. School Library Journal called it a tale that "celebrates intergenerational friendship and determination, growth and nature, and the joy of the holiday season."

Paperback, 40 pages, written by Mary Lyn Ray and illustrated by Barry Root. Clarion Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, 2013. ISBN-13 9780544105096. Publisher age guidance: 4 to 8 years.