Charming Christmas Book!

I just found a gem of a book at the thrift store yesterday and wanted to share it with you all.  

The Magic Christmas Tree by Lee Kingman

It is out of print, of course, but I did a search and you can still find it used cheap online.  

It is a charming story of two little girls that will warm your heart.  Great Christian story!  (No santa in this book)  When I saw the title I almost didn’t grab it because I assumed it was about santa.  But it wasn’t!  In a nut shell, these two little girls each separately find this small pine tree they enjoy playing by but they come at different times.  One leaves a doll, and the other finds it and addes a doll bed.  As the story continues the girls are fascinated by this “magic tree” that seems to be playing with them and over time the girls build a Christmas manager scene.  Then of course one day the girls find each other and discover new friendship.

From the jacket cover: Joanna lived in a cottage by the edge of a great forest, and she had no one to play with.  Whenever she felt lonely she used to walk by herself to a clearing deep in the woods, where there stood a pine tree just her size.  Joanna liked to pretend the tree was her very own. Now it so happened that a girl named Julie lived on the other side of the forest, and she, too, used to walk by herself in the woods.  She played by a pine tree just her size, and pretended it was her very own.  It was the same tree, of course, but Julie and Joanna did not meet each other, for they came to the clearing at different times.  Then the snows came, and mysterious things began to happen, and Lee Kingman tells how the pine became a magic Christmas tree, and how two seven year old girls found out for themselves the true meaning of the spirit of Christmas.  The lovely watercolors of the artist, Bettina, add charm to this unusual story.