In my other life I’m a sometimes-magazine writer. Lately I’ve been getting my ongoing work in order, and part of that includes preparing for a trip report I’ll write on visiting the Little House sites this summer. I’ll be traveling from Pepin to Walnut Grove to De Smet and I’m taking my family along: my four-year-old son and my daughter, who will be just turning seven at the time of the trip.
My daughter is a voracious reader. She’s read all the Beverly Cleary books I’ve been able to track down for her and all the Judy Blume books I’ll let her read. In the interim she reads Junie B. Jones — over and over and over. I let her, but I sigh as I do.
Knowing what a reader she is, and a girl at that, one would probably assume she loves the Little House books. One would be wrong. Oh, she doesn’t hate them–I don’t let her in on how much I love them; otherwise Miss Contrary would most certainly refuse to read a single chapter. They simply don’t interest her much.
But she does like trips. She knows that summer and vacations are almost always all about travel for our family, particularly since my side of the family lives across the country. I’ve been to the sites before, of course. And she, in fact, has been to De Smet. But she was three at the time and although she loved it, she didn’t love it as “Laura’s home” so much as “the place with the little horses where I got to go to school and sing Yankee Doodle.”
But this summer, seven will be the perfect age to meander through Laura’s world. In the absence of reading the books –or perhaps to inspire her to pick them up — I’ve been doing some Web surfing, trying to assemble as many visuals as I can to get her excited about what she’s going to see this summer. And quite by accident I came across Beyond Little House’s own Rebecca’s videos. Starring young Emily, the videos walk the viewer through a tour of De Smet and even a day on the Ingalls Homestead.
Because these “movies” star a real live little girl who could have sat next to her in her first-grade class, my daughter was enthralled. I was thrilled. Now, she can’t wait to go. And maybe, in the meantime, she’ll decide to begin reading.
(Rebecca has posted videos of the other sites as well, including Pepin, Independence, Walnut Grove, Mansfield, and Malone. Well worth watching before any Little House trip!)