John has been reading from our collection of Beatrix Potter books at night to the girls before bed, and we just laugh and laugh at the humor in them (and the way he reads them is quite funny). We especially love The Fierce Bad Rabbit. Sometimes though they are a bit bizarre (a rat rolling a kitten in dough for baking?), and some of the humor eludes us. So John and I watched Miss Potter last night to learn more about these wonderfully illustrated, strange little stories.

According to the movie, many of the stories were begun when she was very young, just a little girl, and this made complete sense to me. The books have story lines that are sometimes what my girls would make up, lol ("Tom Thumb smashed the ham all to bits!"). What I didn't know is that Beatrix was an avid naturalist, and loved farms. After she married later in life (and after making her fortune with her books), she became a farmer for 30 years, using her money to buy up threatened farmland. She started with the Troutbeck Park Farm, and raised a huge herd of sheep, and gradually bought more. After her death she left 14 farms and a total of 4000 acres to the Land Trust of Cumbria.

Knowing about the author of a story always makes me love the story a little bit more.