Being away from home is hard on Laura, but she is too proud to say anything to Ma and Pa. Still, Pa knows her better than anyone and asks if she doesn’t want to “make a clean breast of it.”

Afraid that her folks will not let her return to the Brewsters’ if she tells them about Mrs. Brewster—and Laura cannot imagine going back on her word and leaving before the term is up—she tells Pa only of the troubles she is having with the children at school.

Pa’s advice to Laura is to find a way to manage Clarence, rather than try to boss him. Ma, oh wise and gentle Ma, suggests that Clarence just wants attention and that if Laura makes sure he doesn’t get it, he’ll change his ways. (Funny how this has become conventional wisdom but it never seems to work for me…)

After a happy, comfortable weekend at home, Almanzo drives Laura back to the Brewsters’ place. He says, “I’ve got an idea it’s pretty tough, staying at Brewster’s,” and Laura excuses her discomfort as homesickness.

It’s funny how much I’m fixated on it, re-reading this chapter, but Laura downplays her own feelings so much; in her place now, 130 years later, I would not have stayed for two days and would have no compunction going back on my word given such bad living conditions. Granted, I am quite a bit older than she was. Still, times and expectations sure were different, and it seems to me that Laura was an exceptional girl even for her time.

Laura realizes when Almanzo drops her off with a “Good-by till Friday!” that he may be hoping to become her beau. She does not dwell on it at the time, but (spoiler alert!) brings it up again in the following chapter. Funny that she’s only just noticed that he likes her.

So how does Laura manage Clarence? Wisely, she begins by managing the younger, easier to understand students. Ruby and Tommy often fight over their spelling book, so Laura rewards them for their good recitations by allowing them to take turns writing their spelling words on the blackboard, allowing the other child to use the book. Martha struggles with grammar, so Laura goes over the lesson with her at lunchtime so as not to take time away from the other lessons. Clarence finds out that she studies at night to keep up with her class in town, and he is impressed.

And as for Clarence, he is so far behind Martha and Charles in history, Laura gives him a special (and shameful) assignment: a mere three pages. It takes just until Friday for Clarence, taking his cue from Laura and studying at night, to catch up with the rest of the class.

Mischief: managed. (Sorry, I couldn’t help it.)

It seems this is the perfect time to be doing our read-along to These Happy Golden Years!

Following a pleasant weekend at home, Laura’s spirits were up and she was ready to face the week anew.    After all, it was only seven weeks more and she would be home again, walking to school with Carrie.  Pa’s advice to keep a stiff upper lip helped reassure her too.

The new week looked promising.  This was not to be.   The weather turned dull and gloomy and so did Laura’s spirits.  Little could be done to improve the mood in the Brewster home and things went from bad to worse at her school.

Laura returned to the Brewster’s where it seemed to her that Mrs. Brewster had practically given up.  The poor woman didn’t (or couldn’t) do more than make a simple meal of salt pork and potatoes twice a day.  Laura was appalled that even the most ordinary tasks went without thought.   Mrs. Brewster had let the housework go and “she did not make the bed nor even spread it up.” She quarreled at her husband, little Johnny fussed, and Mr. Brewster just sat.

Up to this point, Laura had faced uncomfortable situations and hardships many times before.    Laura worked with her parents to conquer difficult times.   Never before was Laura expected to face these challenges alone.  No reassuring words from Ma, no fiddle music to play her to sleep, no sister to snuggle next to.  Laura was alone and, for all intents and purposes, a grown up.

The Ingalls family had somehow managed to be cheerful and work together through sickness on Plum Creek, Mary’s blindness, and even the hard winter.   These difficulties only seemed to bring her family closer.

This life away from home was uncharted territory for Laura.  She did not understand how Mrs. Brewster could be terminally unhappy, nor did she understand how her husband cared little about anything.  Her own parents talked with each other, made decisions together, and obviously respected and appreciated one another.   The Brewsters were the polar opposite of her beloved parents.

Laura was dismayed that there was little she could do to better the situation.  “Her head ached as she went toward Mrs. Brewster’s hateful house.”  She realized then that she must just get through the miserable week one day at a time.

At school, her students quarreled with one another.  They misbehaved and did not know their lessons.  Laura did not have the energy to keep up with her own lessons and worried that she would be behind her classmates when she returned to school herself.  It all seemed too much.

Although this short chapter appears plagued with failure, it is a turning point for Laura’s teaching career.   As all the great teacher movies have shown us, a tough week and a tough class brings out the best in any instructor.   (Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, Mr. Holland’s Opus)

Through all of her classroom problems, she wondered if this must have been how Miss Wilder felt when she had taught her school.  It makes one wonder if Eliza Jane didn’t wish for Laura to help her with the other pupils in the same way Laura wished for Clarence to help make Tommy and Ruby mind. Laura believed in her heart that Clarence really was a good boy.  She knew he was much brighter than his recitations showed.

Laura and Clarence are remarkably similar in the two situations.  They are both well-liked by their peers and seen as leaders by other students.  Both smart as a whip and quick thinking, but also quick to action.  No doubt Laura saw some of herself in Clarence, and her expectations went along accordingly.

The days moved slowly, but Laura was ever hopeful that things would be better tomorrow.  Friday was quiet and dull.  She and her pupils were simply going through the motions.  After lunch, the clouds began to lift and the afternoon grew bright.  Like the little girl who brought in the entire wood pile many years before on Plum Creek, Laura had again tackled a problem and the week was nearly over.

The mood lightened more when once again, she heard sleigh bells.  Almanzo had returned for the second week in a row!  As she gathered her things, she heard Clarence shout, “Teacher’s beau’s here!”   Later as the horses trotted swiftly leaving behind the awful week, Laura wondered what Almanzo must be thinking.  She thought it best to say nothing of Clarence.  “Laura decided; as Ma would say, ‘Least said, soonest mended.”

Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.  I know this from watching It’s a Wonderful Life.  In Laura land however, the double strings of Prince and Lady’s sleigh bells mean the joy of a trip home – and the cautious beginning of a romance, since Almanzo has decided to step up his courting under the cunning guise of a favour to Pa, fetching Laura home for the weekend.

This is just about my favourite chapter, and I think it’s one that you appreciate more as an adult – or someone who has left home – than you can possibly do as a child, when the idea of leaving home doesn’t mean much, or it’s something way in the future. All week Laura has been steeling herself to the thought of having to spend the weekend at the Brewsters, tempered by a tiny hope she hardly dares to allow herself that Pa might come to her rescue. Instead it’s Almanzo – he may not be on a white charger, but Prince and Lady and the new cutter are so much more practical for prairie travel. As a romantic ploy, it’s a master-stroke.

Laura’s already dismissed school a little early (I know she says the storm is getting worse, but even so, can’t help feeling you aren’t supposed to quit work just because your ride home has turned up) and Clarence dashes outside to admire Almanzo’s horses while Laura sorts out Ruby’s wraps (just so we know she is still conscientious), and then they set off.  They have to stop at the Brewsters’ so Laura can pick up her things and drop off the dinner pail, and Almanzo shows some disgust.  (Harsh from the man who advocated constant eating to save on doing the dishes in Long Winter.)  But I suppose it shows Laura and Almanzo are in synch about the Brewsters, and Laura isn’t inclined to waste time thinking about the Brewsters.  Then they are off.  The conversation they have on the way home is so sweet.  Laura is in the Flutterbudget ‘speak before thinking’ mode that Pa counselled her against, realises it, resolves to do better, and then does it again straight away.  The cutter is 26 inches wide at the bottom, which I just measured as half the width of the desk I’m sitting at typing this.  Tight squeeze!

Then all of a sudden she is HOME and the really good stuff starts (isn’t “Ma’s smile lighted her whole face” a lovely expression?).  Here’s why I love this chapter:  it’s the perfect expression of the unspeakable joy of returning to the haven of the ‘homefolks’ from the terrors of the big wide world.  There really is nothing like going away to make you appreciate home. Everything is as it was – the house, the family, Kitty, the news from Mary, school and the town, the food, the fiddle music – yet different, because Laura is seeing it with new eyes, having had her first, not very pleasant, taste of fending for herself.  I feel like I’ve come home myself when I read this, and my own throat aches a little along with Laura.

After a perfect evening, Laura wakes up still noticing all those little things which make the happy home: everyone says good morning, pleasant talk at the table, and even the housework.  Laura’s meaning to put a brave face on the time she’s having at the Brewsters’ but she confesses to Carrie, who (in a bit of a Jane Austen moment) can only suggest marriage as a solution. Laura’s firmly on the page of wanting to stay at home forever (and just in case anyone is reading along for the first time I’m not saying a word about how that pans out).

Next Laura pops out into town to see Mary Power and find out where the town class is up to, while her wash water heats.  Laura finds she even likes the town now, and I give a little cheer for Gerald Fuller, as he lifts his cap to her – as does Mr Bradley (does anyone else find themselves paying more attention to the minor characters as we do the readalongs?  I find I’ve become very fond of Mr Bradley), and calls Laura “Miss Ingalls”.  “Laura felt very grown up”.  I love this, though I’m not quite sure why exactly.  I suppose Laura gets a flash of seeing herself as others see her – in a grown-up job, therefore a grown-up.  And, as we find out in a moment, with a beau, according to Mary Powers, much to Laura’s embarrassment and denial.  “Everything is simple when you are alone, or at home, but as soon as you meet other people you are in difficulties,” she says, in a sudden entry into the second person. Quite!  On the other hand, the Almanzo situation does give the chance for a little crowing over Nellie Oleson, slightly to Mrs Powers’s disapproval.

Back home, washing, redoing her hat, ‘talking all the time with Ma and Carrie and Grace’ and Laura is still musing on the truth of appreciating something more when you have less of it.  Now there’s only Sunday morning left, which means best clothes, church – and Ida, who is the only other person apart from Carrie to whom Laura confides her dislike of teaching. Laura uses the idle time during Reverend Brown’s ‘stupid’ sermon (is it just me, or is Laura getting a little more curt now she’s a grown-up?) to muse on the passage of time, and growing up generally. And, with the return to school imminent, she’s now worrying about managing the school, and Clarence in particular.  So now Laura has learnt the Friday ‘hurrah I don’t need to think about work for two days’ feeling and the Sunday ‘oh no, back to work tomorrow’ feeling.  While enjoying Sunday lunch, Laura’s joy lets the cat out of the bag to Pa that she is not enjoying staying at the Brewsters’.  His advice is to keep a stiff upper lip – about which there is more to come in the next chapter.

Finally, it’s time to go back to school.  Pa baffles Laura and Ma by delaying starting – he and Almanzo have clearly been plotting.  The feminist in me feels I should object to this, but I love the way Pa acts as unofficial sponsor of Almanzo’s courting efforts.  I wonder exactly how that particular conversation went. Finally Almanzo arrives and Laura is off back to school in a further jingle of sleigh bells.  I never actually noticed before that the chapter doesn’t just begin with sleigh bells, it ends with them as well.  A weekend of joy with sleigh bell bookends.  I like that.

Poor Laura, just fifteen and far away from home for the first time, newly settled at the Brewster homestead as the district’s schoolteacher for the term. Brave Laura,  attempting to make the best of a grim situation with characteristic pluck.

As the chapter opens, we see her trying to draw sullen Mrs. Brewster out of her miserable mood, trying to keep homesickness at bay, trying to study, trying, trying, trying….

When I first read this chapter about thirty years ago, I wasn’t much younger than Laura.  Having grown up in a joyful, loving small town household myself, with happily married parents and siblings who loved and supported me in every way, I could easily imagine myself in Laura’s shoes, plunked down in the midst of someone else’s misery, and longing for the comfort, safety, and familiarity of home.

Over the years, I’ve re-read THESE HAPPY GOLDEN YEARS more times than I can count, each time gleaning new insight courtesy of age, wisdom, and perspective from my own career as a novelist.

Now, Laura’s plight breaks my heart in a different way. I lost my mother somewhat unexpectedly, far too young. Despite being happily married with children of my own, I sometimes find myself homesick for my parents and siblings and a childhood home that is long ago and far away. I wonder how the adult, bereaved Laura felt when she wrote these scenes, and I suspect that the process was cathartic for her grief over her by then dearly departed parents and sisters.  She wrote about longing for home and family when she was, most likely, doing just that in mining her memories.

As I reread this chapter now, I wonder too about the Brewster household and what might have lain beneath the surface.  As a child, I hated Mrs. Brewster for her cruelty to my beloved Laura—how dare she call Laura, of all people, a “hoity-toity snip”?! Excuse me, Mrs. Brewster, but we have all met a hoity-toity snip, and its name is Nellie Olson. Not Laura Ingalls.

Now, however, I’m inclined to wonder whether Mrs. Brewster might also have been battling demons that we—and Laura—did not comprehend at the time. Was she really merely, as Laura decided, a “selfish, mean woman”? Surely her actions as depicted here would indicate that, but looking at her circumstances and behavior, I have to wonder. This is clearly a helpless, desperate woman. Why? Was she suffering from clinical depression? Anxiety? Seasonal depressive disorder? Was she bipolar? Psychotic? Was her husband abusing her? Had she perhaps even recently lost a child, as did so many mothers in this era?

From a purely literary standpoint, as a fellow author studying the characterization and structure of these scenes, I can appreciate the interesting parallel drawn here between Mrs. Brewster’s homesickness, which is hinted at as being at the heart of her misery, and Laura’s own homesickness. Laura and her enemy share a common plight; here are two young(ish) female characters who just want, more than anything, to go back home.

Mrs. Brewster, arguably the grown woman here, is far less capable of coping with “the flat country and the wind and the cold; she wanted to go back east,” and she takes out her misery on everyone around her.

Laura, by contrast, is barely more than a child herself, but equipped with sufficient coping mechanisms and far more mature than her years and experience would indicate.  She won’t allow herself to forget that the sun is going to rise again tomorrow and life will go on. We will never forget that she’s the hero and Mrs. Brewster is the villain in this chapter; it’s just interesting to note that they’re fighting virtually the same battle with drastically different weapons.

As I write this from my cozy home office in the New York City suburbs, a Saturday snowstorm has dumped about eight inches of snow today and I cringe to think about venturing outside shortly to run errands and go to dinner with my husband and friends. I try to imagine what it would be like to endure endless months of harsh weather in complete isolation, without modern conveniences, and—worst of all—without a thermostat.

Laura frequently uses the word cold in this chapter. We can sweep right past it—or stop and consider what it really must have been like. Cold. We’re talking bone-chilling cold both outside and indoors. We’re talking huddling to absorb what little heat a stove might give off. We’re talking cold from which there is never really a reprieve. If we stop and consider the implications, we can feel empathy not just for Laura, but for every character we meet.  We can’t under-estimate the havoc this harsh winter chill wreaked on every part of their daily lives, not just physically, but emotionally.

If Laura is our heroine, then who is the hero of the chapter? Certainly not weak and spineless Mr. Brewster.  Certainly not sly Clarence.  Is it Pa? The chapter appears to be set up that way, with Laura actually saying, “Oh, Pa, I can’t,” when she thinks about getting through another day, and again when she speculates that Pa might surprise her and come to take her home.  But interestingly, after half a dozen books, the tide has turned and it won’t be Pa who comes to Laura’s rescue this time.  His ongoing role as Laura’s hero and chief protector is about to be usurped for the first—but not the last–time. More on that in a moment.

This chapter has always appealed to me—and continues to—in part because of its darker-than-usual undertones and nightmare sequence. I was a budding suspense novelist when I first read it, and upon rereading—now that I write suspense novels of my own–I’ve always appreciated the subtle notes of foreboding. I shudder at the “Knife in the Dark” scene that  I know is coming soon.  I marvel that it seems so incongruous with the sanitized drama of the Little House books.

I can’t help but think of the Ingalls’ real life brush with the Bender family, prairie serial killers whose clutches, we later learned, Pa himself might have narrowly escaped.  (http://www.prairieghosts.com/bender.html) Laura left the Benders out of Little House on the Prairie; yet she included Mrs. Brewster and the knife in These Happy Golden Years. Why? Was that because this book was more sophisticated, or targeted toward an older audience, or because she had sufficiently grown as an author and included it as a perhaps sensationalistic device, to raise the stakes for her heroine?  Is this dramatic license or a based on a real event? In any case, I have to wonder, again, about what was going on with Mrs. Brewster, and whether she was mentally ill.

But back to the chapter at face value: we learned early in the series that Laura had always been a homebody, leery of strangers; now she was living among them and her worst fears seemed to have come to fruition.  Strangers are harsh and not to be trusted.

Ah, but not everyone. Here, we again meet Clarence, Tommy, Ruby, Martha and Charles. As a child, I really  appreciated the introduction of all these new characters to a literary world that could at times be rather insular.  In so many books, for chapters on end, it was Ma, Pa, Laura, Mary, and Carrie. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! But it was always fun to meet a new cast. Incidentally, that’s why Little Town on the Prairie remains my favorite among all the books. Little Town is rife with new characters, most of them young people like Laura (and like me when I first read it).

It’s interesting to note that these Brewster School students of Laura’s were also her contemporaries in many ways; interesting to watch her in action as a teacher. Now, as when I first read ONE WEEK, I can’t help but feel dismayed over Laura’s almost unfair (in my 21^st Century opinion) insistence on marking tardy students who had walked miles through deep snow to get there.  Come on, Laura, I find myself thinking. Give the kids a break! But once again, my own unsettling dismay is erased a few paragraphs later when she goes out with her students for a hardy snowball fight at recess. There’s our feisty half pint, still alive and well beneath the prim 19^th century schoolteacher’s façade.

Oh, and am I the only one who detected an undercurrent of not just friendship, but perhaps flirtation with Clarence, who she pegs again here as “trouble”? She was prim and proper, but he was older than she was, and handsome.  His character seems to be drawn in similar strokes to Cap Garland’s, and we all know, thanks to Laura’s memoir notes, that she was secretly attracted to Cap. This Clarence fellow could have been trouble, all right. Laura doesn’t—thus, nor will we—go there. No, but we are told that our feisty half-pint made a big mistake in letting down her guard and playing with her students. Now they’re acting up, and she risks losing control over them, particularly Clarence. Compelling tension has been set up here, and we wonder how it will play out in the chapters ahead.

As the week wears on, homesick-but-coping Laura builds up hope that Pa will appear on Friday to whisk her back home for the weekend. I find this somewhat surprising and rather uncharacteristic of her, particularly under the circumstances that had been deliberately drawn just pages earlier. When she bid Pa farewell, we were told that she knew she wouldn’t see him again for two months. And that was before she even grasped how horrible her life with the Brewsters would be.  Pa had no way of knowing this. So her hope that Pa might show up seems based on nothing more than pure longing. The author in me has to wonder whether this apparent incongruity is an error stemming from editorial changes in a later draft.

Regardless, the author(s) (plural here referring to Laura and Rose, but that’s another topic) have expertly set up the conflict and resolution in this chapter. Laura misses home and her family; at this point, we do, too. We pity her being stranded in this strange, cold, hostile place and we’re rooting for her to find her way back to her parents and sisters and little house in DeSmet.

When it happens, it’s an almost magical scene:

It seemed to her that the wind had a strangely silvery sound. She listened; they all listened. She did not know what to make of it….

The silvery sound of sleigh bells heralds the arrival of Laura’s hero; this is a device that will be used time and again throughout their courtship, and a romantic one, if I do say so. Because, wouldn’t you know it: Laura’s hero isn’t Pa after all, it’s Almanzo Wilder.  Talk about foreshadowing!  Talk about payoff!

After enduring this hellish, but ultimately uplifting, week with Laura, we are gratified when this chapter ends with three simple words of dialogue uttered by our triumphant and relieved heroine, “School is dismissed.”

First Day of School, Laura wakes up in the unpleasant Brewster house instead of home, and plunges out of her couch bed into a cold morning. Mr. Brewster sets off to start a fire in the schoolhouse, which was nice for Laura as apparently that would have been her job in some schools. Maybe if she’d been a male teacher? (Teaching timeline: http://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/timeline.html and one-room schoolhouses:http://hoover.nara.gov/LIW/DeSmet/desmet_oneroomschool.html)

Another “delicious” meal of fried salt pork and potatoes for breakfast. (Wikipedia: Salt pork or white bacon is salt-cured pork. It is prepared from one of three primal cuts: pork side, pork belly, or fatback. Long used as a shipboard ration, salt pork now finds use in traditional American cuisine, particularly Boston baked beans, pork and beans, and to add its flavor to vegetables cooked in water, or with greens as in soul food.) Laura tries to make small talk with Mrs. Brewster and be helpful, but the woman is just unhappy and unfriendly. Clinical depression? Seasonal affective disorder? Living a hard life of isolation on the prairie when she wants to return home (as we learn later); I pity both her and her husband and neglected child.

Caught between the rock and hard place of the unpleasant Brewster home and the frightening prospect of teaching school, Laura soldiers ahead and arrives at the drafty, small one-room schoolhouse. Five students, three of whom are older than Laura, face her at her teachers’ table. She takes their names and ages once the clock strikes nine. They have meager resources, just some shared books and a chalkboard at the front of the room. Once they get through the logistics of who is at what place in their studies, it’s time for a fifteen-minute recess. The “kids” go out to “play in the snow” while Laura uses the time to plan the rest of the day.

The students take turns reading aloud until it’s time for the hour-long noon lunch break. (My modern, efficient side wonders why they didn’t use just half an hour for lunch to get finished with the day earlier, but in thinking about it the children probably enjoyed this rare opportunity to socialize with each other.)  Laura eats her lunch of bread and butter alone while the students talk and eat and the boys run races outside.

The fire is fueled by coal here on the largely woodless prairie, and more needs to be added after lunch. We get the sense that Clarence is quick-witted and impish while Charles is a bit slow and Martha, his sister, is sweet-tempered and quicker on the uptake. In an era of physical punishment, Laura wonders how she will discipline Clarence if it needs to happen, since he is a “chunky, husky boy, bigger than she was, and older.”

Even with just five students, Laura has them come to the front to recite, just as in the town school. She has to punish the two older boys for not knowing their lessons well, and sends them to the board to write the words they missed. Clarence says the board’s too small, but Laura sweetly tells him to erase his words and write smaller.

The day ends at four o’clock. They bundle up for their 1/2 or 1 mile walks home. Laura worries that she won’t see a blizzard coming given the school’s layout, but finishes her tidying up and heads to the Brewsters’. “Her first day as a teacher was over. She was thankful for that.”

But Pa knows that Laura is scared, so he opens the conversation. “You are a school teacher now!” And Laura admits that she IS scared.  She’s little, she’s only 15; how can she teach school?  Getting her certificate required that she diagram complex and compound sentences and recite the whole of U.S. history from memory, but she knows nothing about actually teaching school. Interestingly, Laura’s concerns have nothing to do with how she will teach – how she will pass on her knowledge —  but rather, how will she make the children behave? Which says a lot about how schools worked back then.  But Pa assures her that she’s never failed at anything she’s attempted, so she will succeed at this too. (I have a daughter who was also ‘little’ at 15. I can’t imagine her teaching school at that age!)

Laura has never spent a single night away from her family, but now her whole life is about to change.

Finally, after 12 cold miles (a trip that would take us about 10-15 minutes in our warm heated cars but probably took them an hour or more), they arrive at Brewster’s.  And there, Laura soon finds that much is familiar, even pleasant.  The shanty looks much like the one on Pa’s claim; two tightly-battened tar-paper rooms. Yes, it’s smaller than Pa’s shanty, but seems ample for a family of 3. (As Laura says later, enough is as good as a feast.) The furniture too is adequate: a cook stove, a dining table and chairs, a high chair for Johnny, a clock on the wall, a white table cloth, a rocking chair, a large bed, a bureau and trunk, and even a store-bought sofa where Laura will sleep. There are feather pillows, sheets and plenty of quilts on the sofa. We learn later that there is a bench for the washbowl and a looking glass.  There is also a stable where Mr. Brewster has at least one cow (they still have milk and butter in the winter, so there are probably two cows) and horses or oxen for his trips to town and farm work.  And there are, presumably, a privy and chamber pot, but those are never mentioned in the books. The food is good and ample; the same familiar salt pork, gravy, bread and potatoes that have always made up the bulk of the Ingalls’ winter diet. There is even a cat.  How can life be bad with a cat in the house?

But all is not familiar and much is not pleasant. There are no loving sisters to talk to, but a squalling, neglected, runny-nosed toddler.  There is no cheerful conversation at the dinner table, but glum silence broken only by toddler tantrums.  Despite her claim that she spends her days ‘slaving’, Mrs. Brewster is evidently a slovenly housekeeper because the table cloth is dirty and the table carelessly set. There is no cozy fiddle music after supper, but more silence. There are no books. Last week’s newspaper has probably been used to start the cookstove, or torn up for use in the never-mentioned privy. So Laura gets out her school books, sets herself lessons to study, and struggles through the long evening hours before she can finally go to bed.  And once she is there, the silence ends. Through the thin partition she overhears Mrs. Brewster complaining. While most lonely homestead wives would welcome another woman to talk to, Mrs. Brewster views her as only one more trial and burden in her miserable life.  A miserable life that Laura must look forward to sharing for the next 8 weeks.  12 miles is too far to travel often.

We make it easy! Simply read your chapter and write up a summary of sorts, include your own thoughts and feelings. Make it simple or be creative! Most of all – don’t worry! You will not be graded! No writing experience is necessary, just a love of Laura and her books. We want you to have fun. Need ideas? We’ve already hosted read-alongs for The Long Winter and Little Town on the Prairie. Check out some of the chapter posts!

We only ask that you submit your chapter post to beyondlittlehouse at gmail dot com by the time the chapter ahead of yours is posted. Please include your name so that we can give you credit. We will post a new chapter every couple of days.

Any more questions? Don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below or email.

Only yesterday she was a schoolgirl; now she was a schoolteacher. This had happened so suddenly. Laura could hardly stop expecting that tomorrow she would be going to school with little sister Carrie, and sitting in her seat with Ida Brown. But tomorrow she would be teaching school. – These Happy Golden Years

Is everyone ready to travel this journey with Laura? Are we all geared up for another read-along? By popular request, we are going to follow Laura through These Happy Golden Years.

The first several chapters of These Happy Golden Years just whisper cozy winter reading to me. And such perfect timing as it seems winter has finally arrived (at least here in Michigan). Isn’t it a grand time to start a read-along?

Just let us know, in the comments below or by emailing us at beyondlittlehouse at gmail dot com, which chapter you would like to take on. The read-along will start on January 19th.

Come on and take the sleigh ride with us! Or do we have to dare you?!

I think that reading about Laura’s Christmases since I was a child has always influenced how I celebrate my own family’s Christmas. Besides incorporating the Little House books into our own Christmas tree and baking Laura’s famous gingerbread, I think the whole feeling of Christmas has been changed somewhat by Laura’s influence.  We’ve had great Christmases and sad Christmases. Always I remember why we gather together this time of year to celebrate and that is what brings me joy. Laura’s message to me was clear: Be thankful and be happy in the simple joys.

What about you? Did the Little House Christmases influence how you celebrate? Is there a particular Little House Christmas that is special to you? Do you incorporate Little House into your Christmas in any way?

Share with us and tell us your story. It can be short or long. Email it to us here at beyondlittlehouse at gmail dot com and we will share your stories throughout this week before Christmas!