This is a preposterous book!

Firstly, without giving too much away, a tree shouldn’t be so big it reaches someone’s ceiling. Think about measuring the height of the room first.

Don’t get me wrong I love Christmas but there’s a limit to how Christmassy you can get with your tree especially the height!

Mr Willowby’s Christmas Tree is a gargantuan pine that gets delivered by special delivery to a country mansion but it’s too tall, even for Mr Willowby’s home, and he says, ‘Oh good heavens, something must go.’

This story tells you about the journey of the top of the tree after it is chopped off and finds its way into the homes of some of the (I want to say) people in the world. But the original tree was so big it never seems to get any smaller and still needs to be cut down to size.

And so the story goes on, and on, and on, with the tip of the tree finding its way into the smallest homes you could ever imagine.

My favourite part was when the gardener’s wife snips off the tip of the tree because ‘our house is too small!’ The gardener’s face looks frozen in shock and sadness.

I would recommend this book to readers who like weird but funny Christmas stories.

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Thanks to Clara for this guest review. Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree is published in a new colourful version by Doubleday, although you might want to track down the original ‘green’ hued edition from 1963.