I don’t think I’m the sentimental type, so I was surprised to find the Laura Ingalls-Wilder miniseries, which aired on daytime television during one winter school holidays, quite moving.

As a kid I read the first in the series, ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and if I hadn’t read so much Enid Blyton I might be a more rounded adult reader, and I might have even read the rest in the series. But I didn’t. I do remember the image of the rag-doll made for one of the girls at Christmas time and compared what the girls had to my own over-privileged idea of Christmas festivities. I’m sure it affected me; I was always very careful of my toys. I also grew up reading a whole heap of Mormon books which I asked for at a Church fair. I didn’t even know they were religious in nature until I overheard Mum joking about my religious bent to one of her friends. I must have been about nine. I stopped reading them after that, but I think I might have been sullied, because I seem to have traditional Christian values despite the fact I’m an atheist.

I’m sure the Little House series would have a similar effect on young readers. Apart from the underlying Christian tones, the books are full of action and full of the sorts of house-keeping detail that fascinates little girls. I used to play house, constructing floor plans around the base of oak trees with ‘walls’ of fallen dried leaves. The idea of setting up a house from scratch on the Prairie of the frontier is satisfying.

As a kid I didn’t understand the bits about the Indians and the wild west and all that. I’m sure American kids would have no such trouble, but to a kid growing up in New Zealand, a bit of explanation from an adult may be required. That’s possibly what led to me not reading on. If I’d understood a bit of the American history – which is not on the NZ curriculum – it might have helped.

I’ll certainly give these books to my own daughter to read, along with a good discussion on history and settlement and native people and making the most of what you’ve got. ( )

The Ingalls family packs up their covered wagon and sets off for the big skies of the Kansas Territory, where wide open land stretches as far as the eye can see. Just when they begin to feel settled, they are caught in the middle of a dangerous conflict. ( )

Read these as a child and loved them all. I had the 9 boxed set volume.

This book sees Mary and Laura in particular growing up and orienting themselves to the realities of young adult life. However, Laura retains the same storytelling style as in the previous books with language geared at younger children, which I found surprising at first but overwhelmingly sensible; as an author, she displays skill in framing her life as a story for a particular audience rather than as a pure autobiography. Laura continues to struggle with her desires to be young and have fun though more maturity is demanded of her, and shows insights into her growing wisdom by reflecting more strongly in this book on theological truths of her human nature and what it means to be truly good. She is not trying to impress anybody with her story, but simply to recount for young readers what her life as a teenager was like, and the blend of adult worries, childish hurts, and naive stumbling towards romance evident in this period of her life provide a refreshing alternative to angst-ridden modern-day young adult literature. ( )

At the start of Little Town on the Prairie, there seems to be a shift from the other Little House books. Where previously in the stories, Laura has been a little girl, suddenly she is taking on real work, has an interest in what her clothes and figure look like and is taking notice of the things going on in town for purely social reasons rather than what seems fun to a little girl. A lot of this story focuses around the family's intent to get Mary to a college for the blind and then about Laura's school times and the social 'whirl' of town. The stories are sweet and quaint in a way that is classic and comforting. The things that were important to girls then is so different than now, and the stories told in this book highlight that while still making it interesting for the reader who may not understand the conventions of the time. ( )