Little Town on the Prairie

I really wish I had read this as a young girl, but sadly, I was the right age for the TV show then and never considered picking up the books. I always thought the show and the books were essentially the same, but as an adult, I understand how rare that truly ever is. Anyway, I had an opportunity to listen to the series' audiobooks and remembered how much I loved the show, so I gave it a go. I loved the audiobooks. The narrator was great--how she sang all those songs still confounds me. The romance was so sweet--something I would have adored as a young reader--but different than the romance portrayed in the TV show. I still couldn't help seeing the books through my memories of the TV show. The actors ARE the characters in my minds; show more there's no way to NOT imagine Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon as the MCs. And to this day, Dean Butler still makes me swoon.

If nothing else, the books confirmed for me that I could never be a pioneer. There's no question that I'll be one of the first eaten by zombies in the coming apocalypse.... show less

I somehow managed to not read these as a child. I am now almost as old as Wilder was when she wrote them. They are a fascinating study of the past, and the lenses through which we see it. The assumptions about a number of things are very different now than then, including punishing children, chores and who does them, gender, class and race, and qualifications to teach. I may give these books to my granddaughters, but not without conversations about those assumptions. I like that she grew up in a loving family.

I recently read this to my young son, and he couldn't get enough. He's a kid who loves nothing more than to spend all day in the woods building forts, so perhaps it's not surprising that he took to this book. It's a marvelous adventure story that left me in awe of the sheer indefatigable competence of this family. The relationship of the family to the natural world--the great prairie that they move to--is fascinating, as is their relationship to the Indians. Then again, "fascinating" did, on a rare occasion, turn into something overtly racist in the case of the Indians. I struggled with what to do about those passages. They were mostly the characters speaking, so one approach would have been to read it and then pause to critique, but I show more wasn't sure my son was quite old enough to appreciate that. So I took the easy way out. I skipped over those passages. I'm still uncertain whether this was the right thing to do. Perhaps in the future we'll revisit this and can have a fuller discussion. show less

After a couple of days immersed in this series for the first time in I don't know how many years, I'm left bemused in a lot of ways.

From a historical standpoint, there's little else out there for kids that is this rich and complete. The everyday details that make up a pioneer life are lovingly dwelt upon in a way that's just far enough removed that even the littlest reader doesn't panic. After all, if they all starved to death in The Long Winter, there wouldn't be a next book, would there?

From a modern, perhaps revisionist standpoint, I was uncomfortable with the hate that boiled out of Ma every time she talked about Indians. I didn't like the way Pa treated his family, the way he got the most potatoes, the way he dragged them from show more pillar to post on a whim. So many of the things I didn't like were cultural and I feel as if I haven't any right to not like them, if that makes any sense. It's the way things were then, and ought to be presented as such. Those who don't remember their history and all that.

I dig the messages about self-sufficiency, I found the descriptions of how to craft houses and furniture and food out of prairie sod and a few cottonwood trees to be fascinating and useful.

But I don't much like the Ingalls family. I haven't a thing in common with any of them, I don't think. I'm walking away for the last time with some fond memories, and that's enough. show less

This is a nice classic, and I read the very first book in this series years ago for school. I will admit that any book I was forced to read for school was not one I enjoyed as much as I could/should have, because of the quizzes, projects, and the like which for most people, would lessen their enjoyment of said book. (I'm sure we all remember that kind of experience!) Even as a major bookworm, required classroom reading always dampened my enthusiasm.

However, I did read the rest of the series on my own through the next few years, and I very much enjoyed the series. As a kid, I did not realize that this was only semi-autobiographical, and I learned years later that some of the real-life events that happened to the Ingalls family had been show more sanitized, or wiped out - no mention of Laura's dead baby brother, or just how Mary became blind (in one book, she can see. In the next, she is blind. No mention of how it happened IIRC) Some of the characters in the series are composites of real-life people, and some of the events are described in a more subjective manner.

Even knowing this, I still think it's a good series for children to read, especially with the illustrations by Garth Williams. Although some of the darkest stuff was cut out of the story, there's still plenty enough difficulties experienced by the Ingallses to make today's average kid appreciate the conveniences they have. Back then, the Ingallses could not just pop by Wal-Mart when they needed something, there were no video games or Netflix for entertainment, no AC/heating system, medicine was very limited especially if you lived in the backcountry, etc etc.

One caveat is that the series was written in the 1930s, and PC was not a thing back then, so there is some derogatory language associated with Native Americans, and there is also a slanted view regarding the government and homesteading. So if you're getting this series for kids, it's important to have a discussion with them about that.

Overall a good series, educational so far as to how difficult life could be in these times, and different cultural/societal norms of the 1870s-1880s. show less

I've read the whole collection over and over throughout my life. It's still utterly absorbing and I can call many details to mind. Buttons on a dress that look like blackberries. Sugar maple candy. A pair of brown boots on a charity Christmas tree. Jack the dog, and all his years of loving service. Pa's fiddle tunes and Mr. Edwards' stories. Nellie Oleson and her china doll--and the leeches. Glass windows (just imagine!) An "Indian" with a really bad weather forecast. A tiny coffee mill, that must never stop grinding wheat, every waking moment. A tunnel from the barn to the house, made entirely of snow. Almanzo and Cap and their impossible (but successful) quest to get wheat. A train with supplies and an early Christmas. A splash of show more stove blacking on the parlor wallpaper (OMG!). A calf or a horse of one's very own. A calling card with a spray of roses. Sleigh bells at the schoolhouse door. A garnet engagement ring. A drawer of flour and a drawer of white sugar and a drawer of cornmeal, all within easy reach (riches!)

It's been a couple of years. I think I need to read through it again. show less

Man, these are the books that did it for me, the ones that started my love of reading. I can still remember being 7 or 8 years old and staying up way too late, too wrapped up in the story to want to put it down--I guess much hasn't changed with me and reading, I still sacrifice sleep for a good book.I know they're probably not 5 star books, but they are for me--just looking at the covers gives me a nice warm fuzzy squee feeling. I couldn't wait to be able to buy them for my own daughter, I ended up buying them before she could even read--hopefully she'll like them as much as I did.