Little House in the Big Woods

Things I remembered with love from reading this as a child: eating cracklings, making a balloon from a pig’s bladder.

Things I did not remember or even notice: there are a lot of guns and spankings. I told my friend this could be retitled “Guns n Spankings”. I used this as a point of discussion with my children to cover how disobedience could lead to extreme consequences in a time and place without easy access to doctors and communication. We also compared it to an Old Testament style vs NT as we were reading the Old Testament concurrently. It was interesting to reread as an adult.

My kids enjoyed this very much and I did too. I personally chose to edit out some language I did not want my children to adopt. It definitely held up vs show more some other books I’ve reread as an adult.

TLDR if you practice gentle parenting you might want to preread. If you are pro 2A in theory but did not grow up with guns you might also be surprised.

If you grew up never playing with a pig’s bladder balloon, what can I say? Samesies. show less

I recently read a review of the whole series of Little House books on the occasion of their being released in a two-volume set by the Library of America. These books were great favorites of mine as a child, but unlike many other childhood favorites, they have remained hidden away in the attic, unrevisited in my adult years. Reviewer Katherine A. Powers's discussion of the books' descriptions of frontier life and of the darkness inherent in it made me long to read these old favorites again. So I trotted off and snagged a few of them in paperback, my attic dwarf being unwilling to stand on her head and paw through boxes to find my childhood copies (which I once mutilated somewhat cruelly (by folding and crinkling the pages) in an effort show more to make the books look "old"; attic dwarf, in a slightly different role, was none too pleased with my efforts).

I remember that Little House in the Big Woods was not my favorite of the books (I think that was On the Banks of Plum Creek, but I won't be fully sure until I get to it), but gosh do I remember it well. I anticipated every incident, every illustration, even some turns of phrase. I started leafing ahead to see "How far til the stump that looked like a bear?" or "When do we get to the naughty boy and the bees?" Again, unlike other childhood favorites I have read again when grown up, I have little or no recollection of reading these, which makes me think I read them (or they were read to me) when I was so young that they just sort of became part of my own personal idiomythology (that's not a word, surely; surely it should be?). In any case, they were a delight to read now, and not just for the nostalgia. The prose is very simple, but there's often something poetic about it, and despite the episodic nature of the story (there's no plot beyond detailing how people stayed alive and happy in the big woods of Wisconsin in the 1870s), the book was practically a page-turner for me. Incidents that were mostly just adventures for me when I was a child now are tinged with a darkness that did not occur to me then. When Pa is away and Ma and Laura find a hungry bear inside the barn fence, what if the bear had killed Ma? What happens to a seven-year-old, a five-year-old, and a two-year old in the woods, alone, in winter with no way of contacting anyone? The reality of the thing is more real to me now, I suppose is a good way of putting it, and it engenders a respect for the courage of the people who lived these sorts of lives that just knowing that such a life was hard never could. This was fascinating reading, and I'm already well into the next one--or, the third one, really (I'm skipping Farmer Boy for now)--where I expect I may run headlong into some attitudes about native peoples which is going to challenge my fuzzy delight in rediscovering these books, but we shall see. 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

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

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