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Little House #4

On the Banks of Plum Creek

laura ingalls wilder garth williams

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The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as they leave their little house on the prairie and travel in their covered wagon to Minnesota. They settle into a house made of sod on the banks of beautiful Plum Creek. Soon Pa builds them a sturdier house, with real glass windows and a hinged door. Laura and Mary go to school, help with the chores around the house, and fish in the creek. Pa’s fiddle lulls them all to sleep at the end of the day. But then disaster strikes—on top of a terrible blizzard, a grasshopper infestation devours their wheat crop. Now the family must work harder than ever to overcome these challenges.

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1937
Series
Little House
Literary awards
newbery medal, 
Places
walnut grove minnesota, minnesota, 

This edition

Format
384 pages, Paperback
Published
January 1, 2007 by HarperChildrens
ISBN
9780060885403
ASIN
0060885408
Language
English
Characters More characters

More editions

About the author

Profile Image for laura ingalls wilder

laura ingalls wilder

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Rating(4 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
29(29%)
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41(41%)
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30(30%)
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Darfy_Doom
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Reading through this series with my kids. We're very invested now in the Ingalls family. I think the grasshoppers are going to be remembered for a long, long time in our memories. As are the fire balls which Laura describes. We did some further internet research to see what those might have been. Very interesting!

Delightful reading experience!
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onthe15
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This isn't my favorite Laura book but it contains two of the most impressive, and perhaps famous, scenes: Nellie Olson dancing about with leeches on her legs (the absolute best example of "what goes around, comes around" I've ever seen) and the coming of the grasshoppers (nightmare material, that.)

This is also the book where the doll Charlotte goes and comes back--in two favorite, love-hate scenes--and the book where Laura gets a fur muff. Oh, how I wanted a muff. There are more simple, beautiful Christmases, of course.

The dugout on Plum Creek might have been the coolest Little House, of all, and this book might have the best ending, too.

Pa speaking:

"Look, Caroline," he said, "see how Laura's eyes are shining."



***

Following is my review of the series, in general:

The Little House books were almost as much a part of my childhood as my little sisters and my Siamese cat, and random snippets of text or an occasional illustration still pops into my mind at random moments. I’ll never hear about or witness a butchering day without remembering the drawing of Laura, playing with the pig’s bladder balloon. Most of my hazy knowledge of maple syrup making comes from Little House in the Big Woods. Leeches? I’m straight back with Nellie Olson On the Banks of Plum Creek.

Now that I’m older, I realize how effortlessly Laura Ingalls Wilder handed young readers a slice of history. We had no clue we were learning, we just devoured the story. I can’t thank Wilder enough for that.

The fact that many of Laura’s homes were familiar places only added to their charm. I was born (and mostly raised) in Kansas, which Laura traveled through in Little House on the Prairie. My mom spent her first six years in South Dakota, very near the site of the last five Little House books. When I was twelve we moved to Wisconsin, land of Little House in the Big Woods. It seems fitting, then, that as an adult I moved to Missouri, where Laura lived when she wrote the set.

My favorite book was probably always Little Town on the Prairie and my least favorite was definitely The Long Winter. I haven’t read the books for years—they���re on my to-read-soon list—and I’m curious to know what I’ll think of them as an adult.
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Nuthicc
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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On the Banks of Plum Creek has always been one of my favorite Little House books. This story makes me want to run barefoot through tall prairie grasses, roll down haystacks, and wade through muddy creeks. It makes the idea of only getting a package of candy for Christmas seem extra-special and a dinner of “beautiful brown baked beans [and] golden corn-bread” sounds more appealing than steak and crème brulee. I don’t know how she does it, but Laura Ingalls Wilder weaves some sort of prairie magic in these books.

The character who stood out most to me was Ma, who is so agreeable and unselfish. My husband dragged me out to the middle of nowhere – that’s OK! Our wheat crop just got eaten by a pestilential storm of locusts – we’ll get by! You want me to live in a hole in a bank? Sure, honey! A rabid cow just ran over the top of my sod house and nearly fell through and killed me and my daughter – hey, that’s OK “there’s no great damage done.” Wow. I wish I could weather the storms of life as well as Ma.
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swordfish-san
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Man they almost die so many times. And Pa is such a frustrating character. He is loving but he continues to move them to terrible places to live.
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Thepriceyoupay
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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October 2021 re-read, audiobook.
I never read these books as a child (why?) but I did, for some reason, read the first chapter out of this one (why didn't I finish it?) as a nine year old, and have been enamored with "the door in the ground" ever since. I read this series for the first time as a teen, and read them all several times over. It's been an interesting perspective re-reading as an adult. I sympathize with Ma and find myself worried for her, how she has to cope and keep up a brave front for the girls during a lot of the harder moments in this story. There are a LOT of hard times in this book. But the family perseveres, finds silver linings in every rain cloud, and finds their joy and security in being together. Good stuff.

August 2013 re-read, audiobook.
My favorite volume of Laura's youth...
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SteelHard
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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We enjoyed listening to this over the past few weeks. Lots of good discussion points, especially when talking about Nellie Olson.
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rummikab
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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My third or fourth time reading this, and I still think it's one of the best in her series. The challenges they overcame were amazing, and most of all seeing Ma's brave cheerfulness in face of it all, but also the times when she quietly slowed down Pa, such as when she reminded him that the girls needed to be by a school (when he expressed a hankering for the West where the were fewer people and more game), or practically dressed him in extra socks right before he almost froze to death caught in a blizzard for three days! The grasshoppers were SO heartbreaking, especially after all the foreshadowing of hope built up in what they were going to do with that wheat crop.
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D-Lopest
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This was the first book I read of the series because we lived in Plum Borough (by Pittsburgh, PA) and yes, there was a Plum Creek. My aunt gave it to my sister for her birthday way back when.
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