I know it is a terrible cliche, but every chapter inevitably had me thinking “this sounds familiar, I feel like we read this every day, the more things change…” While I did not grow up watching the television series, I was a voracious reader as a child, and repeatedly read The Little House of the Prairie series. I am also very interested in biographies of writers I enjoy, particularly when my perception of them isn’t particularly well matched by the reality (see also L. M. […]
Life Doesn’t Make Narrative Sense
I cannot review the Little House books without talking about this: these books are racist. I hope that teachers or parents who are introducing these books to children for the first time are having serious discussions with these kids about racism and colonialism, and how these attitudes influenced westward expansion. As I was rereading these books (which, by the way, I loved as a kid and reread many times), I couldn’t stop thinking about the word “pioneer,” which in this case is just a euphemism […]
The Real World: Little House on the Prairie
I think I read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books when I was a kid and I watched the TV show for at least a few years when it ran. While I enjoyed the novels and the TV show, I don’t remember re-reading or re-watching them, so I am what you might call a casual fan as opposed to a fanatic. Still, when I read last summer that the “true story” of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life — in her own words — was […]
Laura Ingalls Wilder–in her own voice
I grew up reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s novels as a little girl, and I make a sojourn through the Little House series every few years. As a lifelong Midwesterner, The Long Winter is a personal favorite (perhaps because I relate to it, especially this past winter). I remember from pieces of autobiographies that Ingalls had left some details out, including the death of her baby brother, which is never mentioned in the series at all. I was curious to see how Wilder’s actual life stacked […]