Little House on the Prairie (1935)

Summary:
A family of Ma and Pa and Mary, Laura, and baby Carrie leaves Wisconsin and goes to the prairies and Indian land. This book revels history about the Indians and the white people. This has many different events that take place. It is about the love of family, starting over, and the difficulties of the prairie life. Many people had done what this family did. They left their life behind and started over. Many things happened like with the winter problems. Some Indians did not mind the family being there but then there were the Indians who did not want Laura and her family around. Her family had to be strong and pull together many times.
Personal:
I love these stories. Many times my mom and I would read these at home. I find it interesting about how things could have been for many people when they Indians and white people did not like to live together. I believe life was very hard. The trials they faced would have killed me. They pulled together when they needed to. I just find these stories very interesting.
Classroom:
1. We could make a timeline of Laura’s life. We could have each group of children working on a certain area of the story.
2. In the book children did homework on “slates” or small chalk boards. We could do an activity on the chalk boards.
3. We could make soap. They made all the own soap just for fun.

My blog post about this book is at this link. ( )

This book is so problematic, what with Ma hating Indians and Pa being a selfish ass, and people shooting panthers just for being panthers. I loved it uncritically as a girl, and I think it's still a very important historical perspective but I can't love it any more. It's got some lovely passages, some scary parts, and some jaw-droppingly horrifying to the modern eye parts. I think the only possible way I could recommend this to a modern little girl is as a companion book with [b:The Birchbark House|159666|The Birchbark House|Louise Erdrich|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1280242695s/159666.jpg|154105].

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Some pretty problematic parts throughout. ( )

This series is a series in which I have read all the books over and over and over again. Told through Laura’s eyes, and fading memories as she was well into her sixties when she started writing them, we get a good idea of life on the American frontier in the second half of the 1800s. Laura gives us plenty of detail about their everyday life in fictional form, making it both interesting and educational. Lives was so different then with no local store to pop into, and even if there was one within a few days drive, then things were not always in stock. People had to make do with what they grew or made themselves. No greed allowed, imagine a child of today being presented with a shiny tin cup, a sugar lolly and a small coin as their only gifts for Christmas – there would be tantrums galore! Laura and her sister were overjoyed. The family had to deal with a pack of wolves howling around, malaria attach when the whole family nearly dies, and local Indian folk wanting to kill all the white settlers invading their land. Reading LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, and the rest of the series, always manages to leave me in awe at what the Ingalls, and the other pioneers, dealt with on a daily basis, not just in America – but in other countries around the world – and makes me really appreciate just what we have today