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.

But as a Wisconsin native, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that we take our cheese much more seriously than anyone in California.

Take our elementary education, which surrounds a cheese culture. We read, in great detail, the description of cheese-making in Little House in the Big Woods. (Did you know that you can follow those directions fairly precisely and end up with good cheese? Now you do.) The need for clean comes through very precisely in that description, and the process of aging and ripening farmer’s cheese also is accurately depicted.

The “green” cheese that Laura writes about serves as a hot commodity in some cheese houses across the state, and we all know very precisely how squeaky fresh cheese curds should be. Stop in at any cheese house, grocery store or gas station in Wisconsin, and you can buy those curds by the bag, ready for snacking on the road. Add some fresh locally produced summer sausage or beef sticks, and you’ve got lunch.

In fourth grade, all elementary students learn about the history of their state, and we all learn specifically about the many varieties of cheese made in the state. In my fourth grade classroom, each student was assigned a variety of cheese to bring to class on “Cheese-Tasting Day.” I believe I brought a blue cheese. We all tasted every variety brought by each member of each class in my school, some 60 different kinds of cheese, and we learned about the differences in aging, texture, and production that made each cheese distinct.

I don’t know if they do that anymore, but I do know that cheese remains an integral part of Wisconsin culture. Just look at our football team: The Green Bay Packers (named for the meatpacking industry there), the only publicly owned football team in the NFL, have embraced the symbol of the foam wedge of cheese, selling them at Lambeau Field and elsewhere, offering us all a form of solidarity.

And yes, I own a “cheesehead.” I would venture to say, despite my transplanting to Minnesota, I remain a cheesehead.

When we read the Little House books, sometimes we think about how accurately each might portray the culture in which Laura lived at the time.

Have no doubt. When in Wisconsin, you make cheese.