Holiday Gift Guide: Up We Grow: A Year in the Life of A Local Farm by Deborah Hodge and Brian Harris

Almost like a trip to a farm, Up We Grow (Kids Can Press) takes kids on a photographic journey -- through all four seasons -- to a farm where food and animals grow in abundance. Even in the photos you can tell it’s all quite a lot of hard work: people hoeing and raking and collecting, but also talking to animals, eating fresh produce and laughing.

Photographer Brian Harris is committed to several non-profit organizations and is a proponent of sustainable living. All of that shows in Up We Grow, which ends up being a primer on local organic farming and care of the land. The portrait Harris and author Hodge end up painting is an idyllic one, but it’s also hopeful. If children are taught about care of the soil, composting and the joy returned by the land at an early age, will they carry those thoughts and memories through their lives? We’ll see.