{"id":488,"date":"2007-03-14T21:50:14","date_gmt":"2007-03-14T21:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=488"},"modified":"2024-02-23T14:54:56","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T19:54:56","slug":"wilder_01-02","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2007\/03\/wilder_01-02\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilder, Laura Ingalls: Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s funny what I remember about books from my childhood. I’m sure I read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books, including Little House in the Big Woods<\/cite> and Little House on the Prairie<\/cite><\/strong>, dozens of times when I was a kid: I have a very strong memory of reading them at my paternal grandparents’, a set of paperbacks like the ones currently in stores except with pale yellow borders. But when I re-read these first two earlier in the year for the first time in probably twenty years, I was amazed at what I rediscovered.<\/p>\n

First, I had the hazy recollection that they were set much, much earlier, all the way back in colonial days. (Hey, as a kid I didn’t have a really good grasp on U.S. history, okay?) The Industrial Revolution is a far greater divide than mere chronology would suggest—the author died within my mother’s lifetime! (I don’t think I realized they were autobiographical, either.)<\/p>\n

Second, I had completely forgotten a major part of the second book, when the local Indians react to the family’s setting up a homestead on the prairie. This dominates the second half of the book, but when I saw Oyceter remark on it<\/a>, my immediate reaction was flat-out incredulity. I can’t think how I managed to forget this, but there it is: I remember things like building a house and making maple syrup, but not actual plots. (To be fair, there is quite a lot of detail about making things, from houses to hats to food, which I still enjoy very much.)<\/p>\n

Third, I’d forgotten that Laura was a tomboy. The books are mostly told in third person from Laura-as-child’s point of view, and they make no attempt to disguise that Laura wasn’t interested in proper ladylike behavior (or that she sometimes behaved badly). I probably don’t remember this because I didn’t feel very constrained by, or even aware of, gender roles as a child; but now I think it’s pretty cool. (And, conversely, find Laura’s prim sister Mary very boring, as I think Laura did at the time.)<\/p>\n

As mentioned above, the books rarely shift point of view: in the first book, there are a few first-person stories set off in the text as “The Story of [something]”, and there are some comments from the present-day author of the type, “No one knew, in those days, that fever ‘n’ ague was malaria, and that some mosquitoes give it to people when they bite them.” From my adult perspective, this is sometimes frustrating. I would have liked to know, for instance, what Laura thought about American Indians when she grew up; I could tell that the adults around her had different views, but not what she thought as she was writing. And sometimes I would have liked a psychological explanation for events, not just a factual reporting. It’s a little thing, but what was<\/em> Laura’s mother thinking, to tell blonde Mary and brunette Laura that they should ask their cousin which is best, golden or brown hair?<\/p>\n

(I also wondered about Laura’s mother’s history. There’s a reference that she was “very fashionable” before she married, and she still likes dressing up; she must’ve been really in love to move out of town to a place where she would go weeks without seeing anyone other than her spouse and children. I am not, however, curious enough to read the prequels written by other authors.)<\/p>\n

On the whole, I couldn’t recommend these to adults, because they’re written at a pretty low level. However, so far they hold up quite well to re-reading, and would be fine for kids or to read to kids. I just hope the rest of them continue to hold up.<\/p>\n

(This post was written thanks to a LiveJournal poll<\/a> indicating it was the most desired, rather to my surprise. Thanks, LiveJournalers, for giving me motivation to write.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s funny what I remember about books from my childhood. I’m sure I read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books, including Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie, dozens of times when I was a kid: I have a very strong memory of reading them at my paternal grandparents’, a set of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Wilder, Laura Ingalls: Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,4],"tags":[436],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-historical","tag-wilder-laura-ingalls"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2837,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/2837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}