<b>By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER<br>
Ohio Correspondent</b> </p><p>

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Christmas Tree Farm, written by Ann Purmell and illustrated by Jill Weber won the 2007 Ohio Farm Bureau Federation’s (OFBF) 2007 Award for Children’s Literature.</p><p>
The book shows the process that a family goes through on a yearly basis to create a finished Christmas tree.</p><p>
“The story starts right after Thanksgiving, how the store opens selling the Christmas trees but then it backtracks,” Purmell said. “It goes back to the spring when the seedlings come. It’s quite an educational book and it was a real education for me to write it.”</p><p>
She had no idea how much hard work it was to raise Christmas trees. She didn’t realize they had to be trimmed in the summer and that it was a yearlong effort, Purmell said.</p><p>
This is the second in a series of three books by Purmell that shows children working in a family business (the first was Apple Cider Making Days). Although she did not grow up on a farm. Purmell worked in her family’s business which was eventually replaced by a mall.</p><p>
“I’m concerned about family farming,” she said. </p><p>
“I see a lot of malls displacing (family) businesses.”</p><p>
Yet Purmell did not go directly from working in the family business (a clothing store) to writing children’s books. She left a career as a psychiatric nurse to go back to school for a degree in elementary education. But she developed a serious and rare lung disease. The prognosis was not good.</p><p>
“I slowly got better over many months,” she said. “The type of thing I have there is no medicine or treatment. As I started getting better I thought ‘it kind of looks like God is sparing my life.’”</p><p>
While she was confined to bed, Purmell began writing.</p><p>
“One day a tiny little voice in my head said—youu’re going to write children’s books,” she said.</p><p>
When her husband, Bruce, questioned about that her she told him:”If God wants me to do this he will open doors because it is almost impossible to get things published by mainstream publishers. If this is not what I’m supposed to do my things will get rejected and then I will be shown what else I’m supposed to do.”</p><p>
That conversation took place in May of 2000. She sold her first book the second week of October, 2000. </p><p>
She had always written poetry and journals but had nothing published.</p><p>
Purmell now has five published books. She picks topics that she loves. Yet the Christmas tree book was “very stubborn, it just wouldn’t come,” she said.</p><p>
“I always wanted to write a Christmas book. I always thought it would be about Jesus,” she said. “I thought it would be a different kind of book.</p><p>
“I prayed that God would lead me to write what he would like me to write,” she said. “I was stuck on this one book for a couple of years and then it occurred to me; when my kids were young we used to take them to Christmas tree farms and I was remembering good times with my family. And I thought this would be a fun book.”</p><p>
OFBF’s board of trustees selects the book that will receive the award, said Judy Roush, OFBF Education Specialist. The book must have an agricultural theme and make a distinct contribution to American Literature. Christmas Tree Farm was a 2006 selection of the Junior Library Guild.</p><p>
“It’s a great project,” Roush said. “Over the years farm bureau members have donated thousands of the books to schools and libraries across the state.</p><p>
The book is available from Ohio county Farm Bureau offices or by calling 614-246-8298.