I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember the heat of sun, blazing down on my young skin, soaking into me, as I frantically licked a freezer pop to keep it from melting in an icky, sticky mess on my hands and arms. I’d almost reached the bottom when the yell came up the hill: The bookmobile is coming!
I already had read every one of Laura’s books I could find, and had begged for copies for my birthdays, Christmas, and any other occasion I could think of. But I still held out hope that there would be just one more book. Maybe two. Or three. But just one more?
On this day, visiting my cousins in Madison, Wis., I had just learned about the bookmobile, and how it visited the suburban neighborhoods to make it easier for kids to get their hands on new books. I ran down to the street with Nicole, Sara, and Tracy–my sister-cousins and my sister–to see what the bookmobile lady had in her truck.
There she was: “my” Laura, along with most of her books. No Plum Creek this time. But, wait: what’s this?
“On the Way Home”?
I squealed out loud. My Aunt Bonnie, who’d come down to the curb behind us, said, “Did you find something, Amy?”
“I haven’t ever, ever read this one!”
Because I didn’t live in Madison, I didn’t have a library card. Aunt Bonnie must have checked it out for me, because I was allowed to take the book into the house, immediately sitting down and cracking open the cover.
Rose spoke to me about the trip from De Smet to Missouri, about those days in the wagon, and the heat, and the dust, and the panic. She set the scene brilliantly, and then, Laura spoke to me from the pages. She had a different voice than I was used to. It seemed much more adult, much more like my mom’s or my aunts’, but it was unquestionably hers.
I read it straight through for the rest of the visit, withdrawn from the family’s play, knowing that I would have to leave the book behind when we left. But the thrill I felt then remains the thrill I feel now when I see something new, something I don’t have, something that Laura or Rose knew and loved and shared.
Can there be just one more?
Great story Amy. Reminds me of when I discovered Laura’s books in my high school library in 1970. I read them straight through, and was really sad when I had finished them all.
I still don’t know why it took me so long to discover Laura’s books, but I am glad I did!
I admit to doing this when I was a kid, but did anyone else after reading the books pretend to be Laura?
I used to play Little House on the Prairie ….I remember when we got a new backyard shed, my mother almost had to pull me out of it, because I wanted to play “Laura the teacher” from These Happy Golden Years. I thought it was terribly unfair they wanted to put the lawnmower and pool stuff in “MY SCHOOL HOUSE” LOL!
Oooh, great post, Amy! As it happens, my next post is supposed to be about OTWH as well. Now if I can just find the book from where my four-year-old left it when he picked it up the other day …
And how cool that you had a bookmobile!
I remember, after all these MANY years, the feeling I had when I was given TWO Little House books for Christmas one year! Probably my most memorable Christmas.
And nothing will ever beat the thrill I felt when I found the extra books…The songbook, On The Way Home and, also, The First Four Years.
I, too, was infatuated with the idea of “being Laura”. Luckily, I had a best friend who went along with pretty much anything I suggested.
When I turned 10, my dad bought me the whole set of Little House books for Christmas. He didn’t know I had read all but two of them. He bought them for me because I loved the tv show so much. Well, when I blurted out, “Oh!!!! Thank you! I can’t wait to read these again! They’re my favorites!”, he immediately offered to return them and get me something else. I was horrified at the thought! LOL! No one was taking those away from me.
When I was in the 4th grade in 1968, my teacher read “Little House in the Big Woods” to the class out loud, a chapter at a time.
I remember getting The Long Winter and Little Town on the Prairie for Christmas 1969. I remember which year, because my mother inscribed the books with that information.
New England and New York had a blizzard in early 1970, and I got These Happy Golden Years then.
I picked up The First Four Years and On the Way Home several years later as a young adult, and I only recently got paperback editions of the earlier books, which I must have originally read at the library.
Other than the three my mother gave me as a kid, they’re all in paperback, but I’d like to get them all in hardback one day.
My grandmother gave me the entire set in paperback when i was 4 years old. Other than the first book, I didn’t have much interest in them until I was about 9 years old. But after that, I read them so much over the years that they literally began falling apart. My husband, a couple of years ago, bought me the books again after he saw how much I still loved the stories and also the condition of the books. Now my oldest son likes to read them.