I was gandering through some books at an antique store recently when I saw this:

Of course, the first thing I noticed was the cover art! Do you see what I saw there above the word “BOOKS”?
When I opened it up, there was the title page telling me that this particular volume, which happens to be Volume 28 from 1959, contains the Christmas chapter (complete with Garth Williams illustrations) from Little House in the Big Woods. The entire volume had several other stories, many having to do with Christmas.

The price was right and the book became mine!

Does anyone else remember these?

I was thinking about all of the stories that Laura tells throughout the entire series. Some are happy stories and some are sad. Most of the time the stories have a happy ending or at least a lesson to be learned and that’s what I’ve been dwelling on lately.

There are so many chapters or multiple chapters that tell a particular story with a happy ending. I guess if I have to pick one that really stands out, for me it would be towards the end of On The Banks of Plum Creek. You all know the one, right?

A three-day blizzard has just ended and Pa decides to head to town. Ma voices her concern and urges him not to go. Something very unlike Ma, in my opinion. Pa tells her not to worry and heads off to town. The hours tick by slowly until Laura notices that sky has changed. Indeed, a blizzard is coming. A blizzard that goes on until the fourth day when the wind finally calms and the snow stops.

At some point in my life I have come to realize that the scene that I had once looked at as a daughter, I had now begun to see as a wife. Can you imagine the worry and dread that Ma felt for over three days? Where was her husband? She had that bad feeling about the short trip to town in the first place. She probably knew that he would try to make it home to his family before the blizzard hit. And she knew that he was out there. Somewhere. I’m sure she wondered whether she would see him again.

Ma kept that lantern in the window and she waited and waited. What a happy ending when Pa dug his way out of the creek bank so close to home and walked through the door!

I could go on and on, but I wonder…what is one of your favorite happy ending scene from the Little House books?

Please share in the comments below!

Today it’s Laura’s turn. Ms. Silvey has featured Little House in the Big Woods in the July 10th Children’s Book-A-Day Almanac

At last, when it was getting dark, Pa said again, “Come here, Laura.” His voice was kind, and when Laura came he took her on his knee and hugged her close. She sat in the crook of his arm, her head against his shoulder and his long brown whiskers partly covering her eyes, and everything was all right again.

She told Pa all about it, and she asked him, “You don’t like golden hair better than brown, do you?”

Pa’s blue eyes shone down at her, and he said, “Well, Laura, my hair is brown.”

She had not thought of that. Pa’s hair was brown, and his whiskers were brown, and she thought brown was a lovely color. But she was glad that Mary had had to gather all the chips.

From Chapter 10, Summertime, Little House in the Big Woods

When supper was over, Uncle George went outside the door and blew his army bugle, long and loud. It made a lovely, ringing sound, far away through the Big Woods. The woods were dark and silent and the trees stood still as though they were listening. Then from very far away the sound came back, thin and clear and small, like a little bugle answering the big one. -Little House in the Big Woods, Dance at Grandpa’s

I’m wondering about the food. Is it just me, or is this the Farmer Boy of Little House books? Many readers equate Farmer Boy with food. Well, in Big Woods, there seem to be an awful lot of food mentions — or more than I realized, anyway. In making sure my son was listening I was asking him questions along the way. What is stored down cellar? (potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, cabbages) What things are in the attic? (onions, red peppers, pumpkins, squashes) It got me to thinking: Wow, the Ingalls ate red peppers. Is there any other time we hear of them eating red peppers?

And then there’s all the meat-making (smoked ham, headcheese, sausage –which, OK, I just discovered sausage had the word “sage” in it … lightbulb!). I think it’s the only book besides Farmer Boy that has actually made my mouth water. (With the mysterious exception of the cottage cheese balls with onions and cold creamed peas Ma makes for Mary’s last dinner in Little Town on the Prairie. I don’t even like raw onions! And creamed peas? Cold creamed peas? Whatever.)

And this is all in the very first chapter.

One passage in particular struck me, specifically the last phrase:

The hams and the venison hung in their paper wrappings, and all the bunches of dried herbs, the spicy herbs for cooking and the bitter herbs for medicine, gave the place a dusty-spicy smell.

Funny how something described as dusty can be considered pleasurable. And help me out here: Besides the sage-onion debacle between Mary and Laura (captured first in the pages of the Missouri Ruralist before being memorialized in The Long Winter), this strikes me as one of the only times herbs are mentioned in the series. Could that be true?

There has been talk about the perceived abundance in Big Woods as opposed to the hardship of most of the rest of the books. I think this is the first time I’ve really felt it. Taken on their own without the rest of the series for context, Big Woods and Farmer Boy indeed seem to be two books about abundance. Consider an elderly couple, Missouri farmers whose hardest-working days are behind them. One book relays his childhood, the other her childhood. The pair of books together are a tribute to each childhood. Or early childhood, in Laura’s case. A childhood of abundance.

The reviews are anonymous, but the name “Kirkus” is well known. And no doubt it rings a bell for Laura fans, because Virginia Kirkus, who founded Kirkus Reviews, edited Laura’s first books. She was the head of the children’s book division at Harper & Brothers.

I’d been planning on writing about the four children’s book editors involved with the Little House books in chronological order, but given the recent news I’ll start with Virginia Kirkus. She was really the second editor Laura and Rose worked with: the children’s editor at Knopf, Marion Fiery, had accepted the manuscript for Little House in the Big Woods. But just two months later, Knopf decided to close its children’s division.

It was 1931, after all, and hard times tend to be even harder for publishers, as perhaps you’ve noticed lately.  As Virginia Kirkus herself said in a 1953 essay in The Horn Book Magazine: “The ‘depression’ was making its impress on our sales; people were thinking that new books for children were unnecessary, while the old ones could serve.” But the children’s editors who still had jobs—like Kirkus at Harper—were nonetheless looking for new books, and her friend Marion Fiery told her about Laura’s manuscript.

The Biltmore Hotel

Kirkus wasn’t excited at first: “What I was told on the phone about the book failed to impress my interest. ‘An elderly lady was writing a true story—in fictional form—about her pioneer childhood.’ Well, I’d heard that tale before…” (As a children’s book editor I can attest that prospective books NEVER sound good over the phone. Don’t call; just send!)

Despite her lack of enthusiasm, Kirkus met Marion Fiery for tea at the Biltmore Hotel before catching the train home from Grand Central Station. She was convinced to take the manuscript home and make a decision by the following Monday. Apparently she started reading the manuscript right after her meeting.

You might already know what happens next, since it’s kind of a legend by now: Kirkus missed her train because she was so caught up in the story. And then when she got on a later train, she missed her regular stop.

(The current train schedules show it’s about an hour from Grand Central to Westport, Connecticut. Who wants to bet the sugaring dance chapter is to blame?)

At the time Kirkus was living what she called a “fairly rugged life,” in Connecticut, in a house lit by kerosene lamps and with only a pump in the kitchen; it was one reason why she found “Little House in the Woods” (as it was called at the time) so compelling.  “But the real magic was in the telling,” she wrote in her Horn Book essay. “Here was the book no depression could stop.”

Except, well, Harper & Brothers didn’t see it that way at first. Kirkus worked on Big Woods and Farmer Boy, and though the first book did well, the second one had needed work. In 1932, the books had yet to become a successful series, and Harper decided to cut back on its children’s books division. (Notice a recurring theme here? Ugh.) Kirkus was offered a job in another department until business improved, but she refused, and left the company. She didn’t have another job lined up. Instead, she started the Virginia Kirkus Bookshop Service.

Kirkus claimed the idea came to her in the middle of the night: to provide book reviews not for newspapers or magazines, but for booksellers who were trying to decide which new books to order.  Bookselling is a tricky business in any economy, and Kirkus thought that an unbiased review bulletin would help both publishers and bookstores sell books.

For the plan to work, Kirkus had to read the books before they were published, while they were still in proofs. It’s now standard practice for publishers to send out galley proofs to reviewers in advance, but it wasn’t in 1933; Kirkus helped innovate the system and convinced publishers to participate. She had a knack at predicting which books would become successful—she was reportedly about 85% accurate.  Eventually she was reading more than 700 books a year.  Wonder how many more trains she missed.

Along with Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews was one of the two major prepublication review sources in the industry, so the loss to the book world is a significant one. If its influence hasn’t been as great in recent years, its range was still diverse, reviewing small press books that might otherwise be overlooked, and, of course, children’s books. As Horn Book editor Roger Sutton points out, Kirkus was the rare publication that gave equal consideration (and criticism) to books for adults and children.

There are rumors that Kirkus Reviews may yet find a new home; I would love to see them continue. Virigina Kirkus must have known that she’d been in the right place at the right time to give Little House in the Big Woods a chance, and she started her review bulletin because she felt there were other books that deserved to be discovered as well—books that needed to find the readers, booksellers and librarians who would champion them. Even in hard times, she understood, new books are necessary. Let’s hope that never changes.

UPDATE: As Sandra points out in the comments, there is now word that Kirkus Reviews will continue under new ownership. Wonderful news!

Links for further reading: A former owner of Kirkus Reviews reminisces at the Horn Book blog; more on Virginia Kirkus at Trundle Bed Tales; the Big Woods image comes from from an eBay listing for a gorgeous early edition currently for sale.

But the story has puzzled me for a very long time — ever since I first became interested in doing Ingalls genealogy. You see, if my records are correct, I know who Grandpa is — but who are James and George?

Landsford — Pa’s father,  Laura’s Grandpa — was the youngest son of Samuel and Margaret Ingalls, born in 1812. His older brothers? Samuel Worthen, born in 1808.  John W, born in 1806. Benjamin, 1804. Aaron, 1802. Hiram M, 1800.  James, 1798. And Daniel, 1796.

We have a James, yes… but James is 14 years older than Grandpa.  Is it realistic to imagine a boy of that age — even if Landsford is as young as 5 or 6 years old in the story, that still makes James 19 or 20, a full grown man — sneaking out on Sunday afternoon to play with a sled and being whipped by his father? And which of these brothers, if any, might be our George?

It would make logical sense that if such an event occurred, it would have been the youngest three boys — John, Samuel, and Landsford. If these three boys were indeed the three brothers of Pa’s story, if Landsford was around 6 years old (we aren’t given any indicator of his age in the story, so I’m just choosing an age for reference), that would make Samuel 10 and John 12. That seems reasonable, doesn’ t it?  Can’t you easily imagine the three boys being 12, 10, and 6?  Or 14, 12, and 8?  The two older boys would be old enough to know how to make a sled, yet young enough to enjoy it.

But if our boys are John and Samuel, why does the story say James and George? Were the names changed? I can understand if the boys had a name like Landsford, why Laura might want to change it. But John and Samuel are every bit as ordinary as James and George, so why change them?

Perhaps Laura didn’t remember the names of the boys, so she made some up? That’s certainly possible, although with the names repeated in sequence so many times, one would think that if she remembered Pa telling the story, she would remember the names he used.

What about earlier manuscripts? Might that give us a clue as to their identities? But even in the earliest known version of Pioneer Girl, which preceded the Little House series and gives it its framework, the names James and George are used for Grandpa’s brothers in the telling of this story.

I admit, this is one question I simply can’t answer, and may never have an answer for. What do you think? Which of Grandpa’s brothers do you think are the characters that belong to the story?  Could it truly be James, despite his age? Might one of the other boys have the middle name of George, and gone by that name? Could there have been another son that has eluded genealogists? Or are the names invented for the story? Let’s hear your thoughts.

He interests me because he is the one ancestor Laura never met who makes it into one of her books as a minor character. As I wonder what kind of man he was, Garth Williams’ depiction of him flashes into my mind’s eye. You know the one — he’s leaned back in his chair asleep, his Bible resting open in his lap, while his three errant sons tiptoe out the door to try out their new sled on this forbidden Sunday afternoon.

Yes, that man — Grandpa’s father in the story “Grandpa’s Sled and the Pig” from Little House in the Big Woods — was Samuel Ingalls.

Born in Sandown, New Hampshire, on July 11, 1771, Samuel Ingalls married Margaret Delano in 1793 and moved to Quebec around 1800. Samuel and Margaret had ten children, the youngest being Landsford, Laura’s Grandpa, born in 1812. He returned to the United States shortly afterward, where he served in the War of 1812. He then settled in Cuba, New York, where his grandson Charles (Laura’s Pa) would be born in 1836. Samuel died on February 15, 1841, and is buried at the Maple Lawn Cemetery in Bolivar, New York.

But there’s much more to Samuel than this mere recitation of genealogical facts. You see, in 1809, Samuel Ingalls had a dream. A spiritual vision of future destruction of the wicked.

I think about the man who had this dream… and felt it important enough to write down and spread the message to others. And then I think about the way that this same man enforced a religious upbringing for his family, as told in the story that was passed down to Laura, who recorded it for all of us. A man who had rigid rules for what could and could not be done on a Sunday; a man who invested his time into the study of Scripture; a man who ensured that his children learn the catechisms that would teach them the doctrines of their religion.

And I wonder just how much this dream might have had to do with the strict honoring of Sundays in this family.

But that’s not the only thing about Samuel Ingalls that makes me wonder. You see, when one thinks of the gift for writing that Laura Ingalls Wilder possessed, and especially when one realizes that her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, had this same gift, it makes one wonder just where this gift came from. One might expect it came from Caroline Quiner Ingalls, the educated refined schoolteacher Laura describes her as. And perhaps it did.

But perhaps the gift came from the Ingalls line. For Laura’s great-grandfather, Samuel Ingalls, wrote more than just his dream. In 1825, he wrote and published a small book, Rhymes of an Unlearned Poet.

So that’s why I’ve been thinking about Samuel Ingalls. Picturing Grandpa’s father in the book… piecing together what bits of information I can find about the man that he was.  And wondering… wondering just how much of what made Laura who she was, was handed down to her from her great-grandfather.