I’m bringing Jeanine’s comment up to the top because I think she asks a great question.
I’m wondering what editions other readers of this blog have? I have the yellow paperbacks; I found a blue set (neat to know the origin of those now) at a used bookstore for my older daughter; and about 10 years ago (before she was even old enough to read!) I ordered the coloured gingham set from Scholastic for my younger daughter. We love that we all have our own sets (mine are rather tattered!).
I’ll answer for my part. My experience matches Jeanine’s almost exactly. My paperbacks from childhood were yellow. When I bought them for my daughter, I had no idea how she’d treat them (or whether she’d really like them) so I bought a used blue set in a cardboard holder on eBay. This is also the set that I use for research and my own reading, much to the consternation of my daughter. (I tried to bring one of the yellow books on vacation one time and the thing started shedding pages on the plane. I haven’t tried to read from that set since!)
What say you all? Do you have separate sets for reading and research? Do you have any Sewell books? (I do not.) Which are your favorites?
When I was little, we didn’t own very many books; we used the library to satiate our reading desires, but I did have Big Woods, Prairie, and Plum Creek in the yellow paperbacks. The hardback set at our school library were the ones that I devoured time and time again, however, and when the school closed and the books in the library were sold, I snatched them up, so I am fortunate enough to own the very copies I grew up reading even though they were library books.
I love looking at the cards still tucked inside — my name is on every other line. I also bought the rest of the yellow set at a used bookstore later, because the yellows are the most nostalgic covers for me and I wanted the full set.
I have two blue-cover paperback sets, but they’re different, and this is where I found Sarah Sue’s information particularly interesting. I purchased a boxed set of the blue paperbacks whenever it was that they were out, early 90s, maybe. These have a colorful box, and a full color pictorial cover. However, at a used bookstore, I once found a boxed set of Little House books with blue covers in a very plain looking grayish-blue box. The shade of blue is slightly different from the blue paperbacks of the 80s/90s and the covers are designed like the yellow paperbacks, with the picture inside a frame with the rest of the blue cover (instead of yellow) framing it. I bought them because they were so unique looking but never knew the story behind them. Now, thanks to Sarah Sue, I know they were the Reader’s Digest paperbacks published at the same time as the yellows! (And yes, sure enough, they do say Reader’s Digest inside them!)
Then of course I have a set of the gingham paperbacks — several, actually, that I purchased when the new photo covers without the Garth Williams illustrations came out, planning for any future children of the family to have a REAL set of LH books and not be subjected to those horrid new covers.
I bought a new set of hardbacks to look pretty on display, have a number of the Sewell books, and several of the first edition Garth Williams books that sent me on quite an adventure to find. They had been in the children’s literature section of my college library (along with a few Sewells) and I used to go in from time to time simply to gaze at them. One day I went in and they were gone! I rushed to the desk to ask the librarian their fate and learned that they had just sent off a huge shipment of old children’s books to the local school board.
Fortunate enough to have a father who worked out of the board office, I sent him on a quest to find them, and he succeeded. Some of the books had been tossed in a box of books they were going to throw away as they felt they were too old to be of any interest or use!!! My dad was permitted to go through the box and dig them out and bring them home — for free.
Now that was good fortune!
Most of my sets are for display purposes. I usually use the old school library hardbacks I grew up on for reading or looking things up simply because they’re old enough that I’m not going to hurt them by much reading, yet in good enough shape that they aren’t going to fall apart on me. (My original yellow paperbacks are held together with much tape!)
My favorite set overall is my yellow paperbacks.
However, my favorite BOOK is the Sewell edition of These Happy Golden Years that my brother gave me for Christmas a couple years ago. Because Laura signed it.
I grew up reading the books in the library in whatever form I could get them. I did have a yellow paperback of Big Woods, though, which I think must have come from my school because it has some other kid’s name in it!
The set I have now are the blue paperbacks (didn’t know they were Reader’s Digest either!) that come in a brown cardboard case. Would love to get a yellow set, because they’re the most nostalgic for me, too. I’ve since picked up a couple of older hardcovers, and I’d love to get them all, too.
I’m glad HarperCollins has gone back to the Garth Williams artwork for the covers, but I still miss the orginal title typeface. Harper used that font for a lot of its books and it’s so elegant…
I also grew up reading the LIW books from our local library and I remember that there were two different sets, one illustrated by Helen Sewell and one by Garth Williams.
My dad bought me a couple of the yellow cover books but I never had a complete set until after I was married. We lived at Ellsorth Afb in the early 90s, and my husbands grandparents had a cabin in Minnesota. WHen we went to see them, I got my husband talked into stopping at DeSmet and I bought the blue set from the giftshop. That was the first time I had read the whole set from start to finish and I realized how wonderful the books were. I re-read those books until they are so tattered that the spines are missing parts of the cover. The First Four Years in that set was chewed up by a puppy so I had to buy a new one to replace it.
Ten years ago, we stopped at DeSmet again, and I bought the gingham set. Those books were the ones I read at night while by husband was deployed to Kuwait at the beginning of the Iraq war.
Last summer my daughter and my sister-in-law and I took a mini vacation to DeSmet (can you tell I love it there!) and I splurged and bought the whole set of Hardback books.
There is no question that the gingham books are my favorite set. Laura and her family helped me through a stressful seven months while my husband was gone.
Just popping in to say I was touched to see you move my comment up – thank you!
Strangely, I don’t really remember taking the hardcover books out of the library, although I do remember the dust jacket of THGY vividly – I always wished that my cover had more than just that framed section.
I can relate to Rebecca’s story – I have a bunch of books by Lenora Mattingly Weber (“Beany Malone”) that I got from my former high school library in exchange for a donation. Not only do I see my own name on the cards (usually as the last person to have signed them out – and I got them a few years after I graduated) but my sisters’ names and some of their friends too. It’s very nostalgic and gives me a warm feeling!
Should also mention how much I am enjoying this site. The articles being posted are so interesting, particularly those with a personal slant. Thank you to all the contributors.
My first set of LH-books came from my Grandma. I found it among her possessions after she had died. It’s a German hard cover edition from the mid 1990s with illustrations by Garth Williams.
So my Grandma was in her 70s when she got them. And I was past 30 when I read my first LH-book.
The set contains only 8 books. Farmer Boy is not included (in general). Every book of this edition has it’s own colour – changing from light blue (Big Woods) via green and red to ruby (First Four Years). The cover illustrations are by Garth Williams, too, but Big Woods, Silver Lake and Happy Golden Years have different motives than the hard covers from Harper.
Since I’ve bought the original books I don’t read much in the German translations anymore. That’s why I don’t mind lending them out.
Shortly after I finished the translated books I bought a paper back edition of Farmer Boy (the green checkered one from Harper), because I wanted to know what it was about.
Actually this was the first book I ever read from cover to cover in English.
After all I liked the original more than the writing-style of the translations and so I bought a whole boxed set of checkered paper backs – used but almost like new back then. These are the books I usually read in. Meanwhile they look quite … well, lets say “much-loved”. The backs and covers got wrinkles, and bookmarks and notes are sticking out everywhere.
Even if I really love my worn paper backs, I wanted some long-lasting LH-books as well… quasi as a Sunday best in book-form.
)
So this year I presented myself with a brand new set of hard covers (the normal set from Harpers with black and white illustrations by Garth Williams inside).
It might seem ridiculous but when I opened the first book and heard this faint crackling sound… like the book was whispering: “Hello, unknown reader. Here I am, your brand new book. Come and explore me…”, I felt kind of awe-struck.
I received the yellow boxed set when I was little. As an adult my husband bought me all the hardcovers. Then I bought my first daughter a gingham boxed set from a local Barnes and Noble when it was on sale and only about $30! My youngest daughter got saddled with a used blue boxed set that looked never read, however the books all had a slight wave to them despite the box they fit so snugly into. Because of that I got them for only $15.
The blue set is the one with the color picture box and the ugly book covers minus the nice ‘frames’ of the yellow books. Had I bought her a new set it would have been $65!
I’ve never read the hardcovers, I always read my yellow set. It’s been read over and over again, but is not falling apart. It’s also not in my possession at the moment, having loaned it to a friend several months ago. Methinks I ought to look into that situation about now, eh?
I don’t like the Sewell drawings and have no desire to own any more books of the series unless it were to be one autographed by Laura, herself. Maybe Rebecca will give me her copy…..
By the way, my daughter’s boxed blue set with the full color illustrated box does not say Scholastic anywhere on it….it says Harper & Row. They are definitely not Scholastic….I once purchased a Scholastic set brand new from their flyer for $20 and HATED it. The box was cheap and thin and the book pages were thin, as well. My daughter gave it away as a birthday gift to a friend.
The hardbacks, received one at a time over the years 1958-1960. I couldn’t WAIT to get the next one after finishing each one.
I still have them. The covers are raggedy, and I have had to get one rebound, but that is because I made the mistake of lending them to my students when I was a teacher.
I should be happy that I got them all back!
Now I carry them around to my programs and that is hard on them, even though I wrap them in bubble wrap and pad them.
I keep a set of the yellow bounds, next to my bedside for quick reference. They came from a Goodwill store for some rediculous price like 25 cents each.
Occasionally I buy a set on e-bay , to donate to schools who have me visit.
I have only one Sewell version. I have a school bound version of OBPC, which I display with a Spanish, Indonesian, and Chinese version. That Chinese came from the Mansfield if remember correctly. It always generates interest.
I often tell my listeners, that if I live to be 100 and am in a nursing home, I hope they are under my bed so I can always go back in time to visit an old friend.
I have a set of hardbacks from the late 60′s and early ’70s, all except Farmer Boy. I hated Farmer Boy when I was young and refused to buy it. I usually bought my own book with birthday or Christmas money. I also have a boxed set of paperbacks from Scholastic that I use for display. I have all but 3 Sewells not all first editions but all first runs if that makes any sense. I have several editions of Little House on the Praire and just bought the 75th anniversary edition of LHBW. I also have the show edition of LHOTP that I bought at the Guthrie last year.
I also collect books that Laura owned or mentioned in her writing. I have Pa’s Animal book, Mother, Heart and Home, and many others.
I have a first edition of Let the Hurricane Roar and several of Rose’s books. I could go on but won’t
We have a yellow paperback set; not my original one. Mine fell apart long ago…and these are starting to fall apart, too! I do have one ex-lib hardcover Sewall edition of LHOP that my aunt gave me, too. I’d like to have a set of hardbacks so that we won’t have to worry so much about the falling apart.
I first found the LH books at school after having watched the NBC show for the first time, it was season 3 or 4 and I was in 7th grade. I can still remember where those books were located on the shelves. They were the hard cover editions and the first ones I read were Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years. To this day, when I look at the beautiful covers of my own hardback copies, I am taken back to that library. I get a really good feeling inside just by looking at them.
I went to the store and bought my own copies of the yellow books, two at a time until I had them all. Years later, after my college days, the internet made it very easy for me to fall in love with all things Laura again. I still had my books but those hardcovers had cast a spell on me, I had to have them. I gradually got them all and should have been happy at that. But I found out that these books weren’t the originals and eventually I bought all of the Sewell illustrated editions on Ebay. Now I am about 75% done collecting the coloured illustrated copies. My online friends and I are reading them together and when I come to a book that I don’t have in the coloured series, I’ll go and buy it. We haven’t been reading lately. I’ll have to go and start them up again. We will be reading The Long Winter next.
I have over 100 books in my library either by Laura or written about her. I just love them all.
I have the yellow set that I got for Christmas when I was a teenager. It is TATTERED. This is the set I really READ…and they are all in the carboard holder, which may very well be all that is keeping them from disentegrating completely!
I also have a hardback, fairly new, copy of Farmer Boy bought on eBay; and a few other random paperbacks, blue and gingham; and I also have my most treasured one: a hardback On the Banks of Plum Creek from Christmas when I was in about the third grade. Despite being read about a jillion times, it is in remarkably good condition.
I have my original yellow covered set that my parents gave to me for my 8th birthday. I do not use them as they are falling apart. My sister-in-law has been giving me a hard cover copy of each of the books each year for Christmas. I was given one of the “read aloud” editions of LHOTP by a fellow teacher. I love this one for reading in class. I also have several sets of the gingham covered books that I keep in my classroom library which is affectionately called “The Little House Corner”. It’s decorated as a log cabin, complete with a red checked table cloth, lantern, log walls and log “stumps” to sit upon and read (these are small kitty condos covered with camouflage fabric). My students beg to go to the Little House Corner! I recently ordered more copies of the first five books for my students to read in class because I don’t have enough copies for all the Little House lovers! My older sister also buys me anniversary editions of the books when they come out. I treasure ALL of my LH books!
I suppose I lucked out a couple months ago when I scored a boxed set from a thrift shop for 2 dollars :0) They are the blue Readers Digest ones in the light blue cardboard case. I love, love, love when something wonderful falls into your lap.