Little House in the Big Woods

Reading this story as an adult it really is striking how different the hard lives of isolated settlers were from our modern society. The book is a stark reminder that we don't know how easy we have it - we might be isolating away because of COVID, but that is a drop in the ocean compared to living in a small family of two adults and three children in a log cabin in the middle of the woods, responsible for all your own food, and spending the winters indoor with snow piled around the house.

Told from the point of view of Laura as a 4 year old, the story is almost too saccharine to be true. Pa hunts and reaps, tells stories, and plays his fiddle. Ma works hard but cheerfully, churning butter, washing, cooking.

The children mostly behave, show more and when they are not perfect there is a swift beating (which all feel is well deserved, and has been handed down the generations - pa tells the stories of when his pa beat him), in a way that seems excessive to modern sensibilities - whipping a four year old with a strap for striking her sister once who was tormenting her! There is a good sprinkling of morality tale too - their cousin is a lazy boy who cries wolf and doesn't help and no-one believes him when he gets stung all over by bees.

The sheer skill that everyone has - how to make butter, how to cure skins, how to smoke meat, how to carve wood, how to tap maple syrup, hot to make hats etc etc - is really impressive. Having dabbled a bit in home crafts makes me even more in awe.

But then it really was all life and death, wasn't it? It is a lovely story, sugar swirls poured on snow, dances, rag dolls. But you don't see the women giving birth in the wilderness, and you don't see the time the bear doesn't wander away, or the time there isn't enough food to get through winter.

The environmental position is interesting. There is the time Pa holds his hand from shooting, because of the splendour of the stag and the bear. There is the fact they eat no meat all summer, to allow the young animals time to grow. But there is no suggestion that it isn't the right thing to do to smash up the bee hive and take all the honey (the bees will find another tree, and start again with the left over honey scraps), and there is great joy in the wonderful threshing machine.

In general, a fascinating slice of life from a very different world. show less

She thought to herself, "This is now."

"Little House" is another stop on my casual journey to read classic children's books that I should have read when I was a kid. Merely 50+ years late.

This project started in earnest when I made a friend, a booktuber, who did read all those books as a kid. Some she read many, many times over. Among all sorts of books she reads now, she discusses and still cherishes the childhood ones on her channel too. Once I asked her what would a book have to contain to be perfect for her as a lifelong reader. She answered that it had already been written. It was the Little House on the Prairie books.

So now I feel part of that cozy Love Wilder tribe. This tale of family and friends is kind and joyful. The many show more preparations for each season and their self-reliance is astounding. Hard-working doesn't even begin to describe what life must have been like for them. Makes me plumb ashamed at how much complaining I do over mere inconveniences. I admire that combination of goodness and fortitude.

The beautiful spirit in this book might be considered naive. But, like time with my friend, it is invigorating, even healing, to be wrapped in kindness and joy.

I do have to laugh, though: what an unintentional contrast it makes to the very last book I finished, Independent People! It was also a great book about self-sufficiency, but with an ironic view. It could hardly be more different than Wilder's.

I wouldn't ever pit the viewpoint of the two stories against each other, one right one wrong. Since time immemorial there are all kinds of experiences available in this world and reading gives us access to many lives and ways of living. Our own reality is, like those writers, a canvas.

And so, like little Laura Wilder, this is my now,, one that has real hardships but also has an overflowing fullness of simple joys. One of the duties to being alive is to actually be alive. show less

A very young Laura Ingalls (she celebrates her 5th birthday in the book) tells about life in a Wisconsin cabin with her Pa, her Ma, her older sister Mary, and her baby sister Carrie. Over the course of about a year, Laura describes the hard work of frontier life, interspersed with times for play and family gatherings.

My fourth grade teacher read this to the class and I was bored to tears at that age. It didn’t speak to this child of the TV generation. I had no frame of reference for the kinds of chores that were part of the Ingalls family’s daily existence, and Laura was too young to interest a 9-year-old.

My adult self relished the vivid descriptions of farm living. My own Midwestern ancestors likely lived in much the same way. I show more was struck especially by Laura’s description of her mother, who worked with joy and had just the right blend of firmness and gentleness with her children.

I highly recommend listening to the audio version if you can get your hands on it. Cherry Jones’ superb narration enhanced the experience, as did Paul Woodiel’s fiddle interludes. show less

I still like the parts of this book that I've remembered fondly through the decades: the sugaring-off party, the paired tales of a stump mistaken for a bear and a bear mistaken for a cow, the snow candy. But I sure didn't remember the extensive and rather enthusiastic references to whipping, spanking, and the general “tanning” of “hides.” Practically all of Pa’s lovingly-remembered fireside tales involve a child ‘earning’ some form of physical attack from an adult in this world in which 'children should be seen and not heard.' Apparently I skimmed over those bits as a child; as an adult and a loving parent, I find them disturbing. Oh, and a lot of the book is just plain boring: at least for the adult reader, there is show more indeed such a thing as too much detail. show less

First sentence: Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.

Premise/plot: Little House in the Big Woods is the first in an autobiographical FICTION series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura Ingalls Wilder is sharing her vivid memories of childhood starting with her Wisconsin years. She writes of Pa, Ma, Mary, and baby Carrie. She writes of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She writes of chores, chores, and more chores. She writes of story and song. So many chapters of this one feature an extra-bonus story. Laura recalling Pa recalling a story from his own past, a story from his father's past, a story from his grandfather's past. This one really does show more capture many of the five senses--the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. of her childhood. It is a personal story, though probably not unique. She is writing of "sixty years ago," a way of life then past, a way of life falling out of [collective] memory perhaps, a way of life that can only be memorialized (is that the right word???) in family stories. Every family has stories. Not all families pass along the stories throughout the generations. The book is an act of love.

My thoughts: The series is not without controversy. I know that. You know that. We've lived long enough that Laura Ingalls Wilder--for better or worse--has fallen out of fashion, out of style. At best she's seen as quaint. At worst, well, a racist. I do think Little House in the Big Woods may be the least problematic in the series. The possible offenders being Ma baking a type of bread called "Rye n' Injun bread" and Pa singing a line in a song with the word darky. (The bread is made from rye flour and corn meal.)

I appreciated many things about this one. I love all the snapshots of day-to-day simple life. I love the snapshots of special memories--like the Christmas chapter, or the one where they go to visit family and make candy. I love the focus on family, on storytelling, on tradition. I wouldn't say the book is overly faith-forward or religious, yet, I think in some ways faith provides the skeleton--the structure--beneath.

I do read it differently the older I get. Here is the last paragraph that hit me right in the heart:

She thought to herself, "This is now."
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

Very true to life, in my opinion. show less

First sentence: Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.

Premise/plot: Little House in the Big Woods is the first in an autobiographical FICTION series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura Ingalls Wilder is sharing her vivid memories of childhood starting with her Wisconsin years. She writes of Pa, Ma, Mary, and baby Carrie. She writes of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She writes of chores, chores, and more chores. She writes of story and song. So many chapters of this one feature an extra-bonus story. Laura recalling Pa recalling a story from his own past, a story from his father's past, a story from his grandfather's past. This one really does show more capture many of the five senses--the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. of her childhood. It is a personal story, though probably not unique. She is writing of "sixty years ago," a way of life then past, a way of life falling out of [collective] memory perhaps, a way of life that can only be memorialized (is that the right word???) in family stories. Every family has stories. Not all families pass along the stories throughout the generations. The book is an act of love.

My thoughts: The series is not without controversy. I know that. You know that. We've lived long enough that Laura Ingalls Wilder--for better or worse--has fallen out of fashion, out of style. At best she's seen as quaint. At worst, well, a racist. I do think Little House in the Big Woods may be the least problematic in the series. The possible offenders being Ma baking a type of bread called "Rye n' Injun bread" and Pa singing a line in a song with the word darky. (The bread is made from rye flour and corn meal.)

I appreciated many things about this one. I love all the snapshots of day-to-day simple life. I love the snapshots of special memories--like the Christmas chapter, or the one where they go to visit family and make candy. I love the focus on family, on storytelling, on tradition. I wouldn't say the book is overly faith-forward or religious, yet, I think in some ways faith provides the skeleton--the structure--beneath.

I do read it differently the older I get. Here is the last paragraph that hit me right in the heart:

She thought to herself, "This is now."
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

Very true to life, in my opinion. show less

Summary: This story is a fictionalized autobiography of the pioneer childhood of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family, the Ingalls family. This is the first book in the series depicting this pioneer life and her family's home in Wisconsin.

Review: As a child this was one of my favorite books. I loved the harsh depictions of what her childhood must have been like, and LIW is a talented writer! However, this book has come under recent scrutiny, and that caused me to revisit a childhood favorite. I do not know how I missed the inherent racism of LIW's depcition of Native Americans. Yes, I know that is from her perspective, and it was a different time. This book also has racist depictions of any non-white person (i.e. darkeys). I now have show more historical context to put this story in a place where I can value the storytelling, but I no longer hold this in such a dear place in my heart. I can, however, take it for what it is. A childhood remembrance of a harsh time for settlers told in a beautiful manner. show less