We apologize for the interruption in blogging this week. The Beyond Little House blogging team has been exploring “Little House” land together while planning the Laurapalooza 2010 conference. Expect a return to regular blogging next week.
In the meantime, we received a question that doesn’t have a clear-cut answer, so we thought you might like to add your two cents to our response.
I’m a newcomer to Laura Wilder. I’ve just read and very much enjoyed Helen Wetmore’s biography of her brother (Buffalo Bill), “Last of the Great Scouts.” In addition to the story of Buffalo Bill himself, the setting showing the opening up of America was of great interest to me (I’m South African). In the introduction to Helen Wetmore’s story, Joy S. Kasson writes that both Hamlin Garland and Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about their childhood experiences on the frontier. I would therefore appreciate it very much if you could recommend one or two (or more!) of Laura Wilder’s books that best portray that frontier life.
Errol Collen
Johannesburg, South Africa
Our answer: The Little House series forms a beautiful compilation of life on the American frontier from the perspective of one individual’s experience. It would be difficult to isolate one or two of the books and truly grasp the full pioneering experience. Therefore, our recommendation is to read the entire series if at all possible.
However, individual books do capture different aspects of the frontier experience. Therefore, we’re opening this one up to our readers. If you had to recommend one or two Little House books that best portray that frontier life, which would you choose and why?
Many thanks so far. I’ll make a note in the mean time to look out for any of the books in the series. I assume this would be what seem to be the eight main books of the series (publ. 1932-1943), rather than the four “ancillary” ones (publ. 1962-2006), as indicated by Wikipedia.
Thank you,
Errol
Farmer Boy is the story of Laura’s husband Almanzo’s boyhood on a New York farm. It’s a great book, and contributes to the series, as Almanzo is a major character in the final books. However, it’s not a frontier book, so if you skip any book at all, that’s the one I would skip.
The “Laura series” consists of:
Little House in the Big Woods
Little House on the Prairie
On the Banks of Plum Creek
By the Shores of Silver Lake
The Long Winter
Little Town on the Prairie
These Happy Golden Years
The First Four Years
I think Little House on the Prairie is a good stand alone book that shows what taking homestead and opening the frontier meant.
I’m looking forward to an update on the plans for the Laurapalooza 2010 conference.
Gayle
I think By the Shores of Silver Lake is a fabulous book about frontier life. It describes in such amazing detail the building of the railroad, provides a comparison between wagon travel and train travel, gives a sense of the isolation of the frontier, and features some truly wonderful characters who give a pretty complete picture of the kind of people who helped settle the American west (railway workers, thieves, natives, immigrants, preachers).