The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder

June 16, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Scholastic, 1971. 135 pgs. Purchased. Found after Wilder’s death, the final book in the Little House series covers the first four years of Laura’s marriage to Almanzo. Although the Wilders welcome their daughter, Rose, the first four years of their marriage are marked largely by death – the destruction of their farm, the struggle to make it as farmers, and the unexpected and unexplained death of their unnamed infant son. Almanzo promised Laura at the beginning of […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Classics, Fiction, Juvenile, North America, Reread, United States • Tags: Laura Ingalls Wilder

These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder

June 15, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Scholastic, 1971. Originally published 1943. 289 pgs. Purchased. Fifteen-year-old Laura manages to earn her teaching certificate even though teachers must be sixteen in the Dakota territories and is sent to teach at a claim shanty twelve miles from the Ingalls family home. Feeling completely out of her element both as a teacher and a border in a local family’s home, Laura desperately wants to go home toughing it out only because her family needs her wages to […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Classics, Fiction, Juvenile, North America, Reread, United States • Tags: Laura Ingalls Wilder

Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

June 14, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Scholastic, 1969. First published 1941. 307 pgs. Purchased. After surviving the long winter, the town of De Smet experiences a building boom and Charles’ experience as a carpenter is in great demand. Still not old enough to teach but desperate to help raise money to send Mary to college for the blind, Laura takes a job sewing shirts consigning this former tomboy to sit still for hours on end engaged in an activity she hates. The lightness […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Classics, Fiction, Juvenile, North America, Reread, United States • Tags: Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

June 13, 2014 by Christina

A series of terrible blizzards hit the town of De Smet in the Dakota Territories where the Ingalls family now resides from October until April. Figuring his family will be safer in town than in the roughly built shanty on his claim, Charles moves the family and their provisions of food and coal into town and Caroline decides the proximity means the Laura and her younger sister, Carrie, can attend school all winter-long. Conditions deteriorate as snow pills up blocking […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Classics, Fiction, Juvenile, North America, Reread, United States • Tags: Laura Ingalls Wilder

By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder

March 11, 2013 by Christina

In the fifth book of the series, Laura and her family move west for the very last time, following the railroad and the lure of free land from the government. The book chronicles the family’s move, Pa’s time as a paymaster/shopkeeper for the railroad, and daily life living in the growing and, at times, dangerous town of De Smet as Pa decides where to stake his land claim. The Ingalls ended up permanently settling in De Smet, South Dakota (then […]

Categories: 2013 Reads, Classics, Fiction, Juvenile, North America, Reread, United States • Tags: Laura Ingalls Wilder

On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder

January 8, 2013 by Christina

Fiction — print. Scholastic, 1953. Originally published 1937. 339 pgs. Purchased. The fourth book in the Little House series follows the Ingalls family after their move from Kansas to Minnesota and a house built into a hill and made of sod. Ma turns her nose up at the house, and Pa builds the family a brand new house beside the creek after borrowing against their first wheat harvest. The Ingalls soon discover what their Norwegian neighbors mean when they refer […]

Categories: 2013 Reads, Classics, Fiction, Juvenile, North America, Reread, United States • Tags: Laura Ingalls Wilder

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

August 6, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Scholastic, 1953. Originally published 1933. 372 pgs. Purchased. The back cover of this book says that this is the story of Almanzo Wilder, future husband of Laura, as a little boy living on a big farm in New York State while Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the western prairie. That claim is not entirely true — the book is set in 1866 – 1867, the year before the birth of Laura and long […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Classics, Fiction, Juvenile, New York, North America, Reread, United States • Tags: Laura Ingalls Wilder

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

January 14, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Scholastic, 1963. Originally published 1935. 335 pgs. Purchased. This book, the second in the series, follows the Ingalls family as they move from Wisconsin to the wide-open prairie of the Kansas Territories. Pa is frustrated with how populated Wisconsin has become and decides the family needs to move away to area less populated. I continue to be surprised at the issues I overlooked while reading the Little House series as a kid. I also never noticed how […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Classics, Fiction, Juvenile, North America, Reread, United States • Tags: Laura Ingalls Wilder

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

January 11, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Scholastic, 1959. Originally published 1932. 238 pgs. Purchased. As I said earlier this month, the Little House series are the books that come to mind when I think of childhood favorites. This book, the first in the series by Wilder, fictionalizes her life in the woods of Wisconsin in the 1870s. Living with her sisters, Mary and Carrie, along with her Ma and Pa, Laura grows up in an environment long gone from the American life by […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Classics, Fiction, Juvenile, North America, Reread, United States • Tags: Laura Ingalls Wilder