This is a first-rate work of history due to the book’s annotations and Wilder’s nonfiction voice. The editor, Pamela Smith Hill, highlights the process of turning nonfiction into fiction. There is also analysis of the relationship between memories and writing. Wilder was something of a stickler for accuracy, especially in comparison with her daughter-and-editor, Rose … Continue reading Pioneer Girl
In this novel I feel like I’m reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s pure voice for the first time. This book, as is well known, was never edited by her daughter Rose Wilder Lane and is very different from the other Little House books. The language is more plain, but the book feels more honest. Rose Wilder … Continue reading The First Four Years
The first half of this book, covering Laura’s first teaching assignment, is just about the best sustained writing I’ve found in the all the Little House books: it has unity, not just episodes. The second half loses this unity but overall it remains a great book, one of my favorites of the series. It seems … Continue reading These Happy Golden Years
This book is filled with wonderful episodes and, in my opinion, the best writing this late in the Little House series. Mary going blind, and the death of Jack, are well-known episodes; I had read them last year without continuing in the book, and their simple power holds you on second reading. Continuing into the … Continue reading By the Shores of Silver Lake
This one for me will always be The One With the Grasshoppers.* Said grasshoppers destroy the Ingalls’ wheat crop and smother their farm like a Biblical visitation. Worse, they stay. And lay millions of eggs. Then one day they start marching on the ground, robotically, toward the west, finally taking their bows without so much … Continue reading On the Banks of Plum Creek
This is an utterly charming book, and I flew through it. As always, there was much detail about farm chores that I didn’t understand and which often left me bored. But some of that stuff in this book was mildly interesting (like cheesemaking); and none of it detracted from the pleasures of the book for … Continue reading Little House In the Big Woods
A few weeks ago I posted about how we've been watching "Little House On the Prairie" on a nightly basis since around the time that quarantine began. I knew from watching the series as a child that the episodes often quoted the Bible, but I noticed this time that sometimes the Bible was quoted in … Continue reading Bible and books in “Little House” TV series
When we went into quarantine almost exactly a year ago and started home-schooling, I showed my kids a YouTube video about one-room schoolhouses of the past. Then I remembered the Walnut Grove schoolhouse from the TV series of “Little House On the Prairie”. I grew up watching that show every day back in the 1980s, … Continue reading The Long Winter
October 4, 2020 My son thinks I’m reading “Donkey Hotee”. The book has never been funnier than in the first 7 chapters of Vol. II. As always, it’s the dialogue that gets me the most, especially Sancho’s talks with his wife and with Don Quijote. Cervantes is getting more creative and trying new things, and … Continue reading 62 chapters into Don Quixote
