I was visiting relatives in Minnesota recently and was hit with a wave of nostalgia when I saw a sign for the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Walnut Grove. Somewhere in my mother's photo collection there is a picture of 8-year-old me, crouching by the grassy mound that was once the dugout home of Laura Ingalls and her family in the 1870s. Laura's stories from that period are told in the book, "On the Banks of Plum Creek." Coincidentally, Laura was also about 8 in the book.

I loved the Little House books when I was a kid, and last summer I reread the first three in the series. If you were a fan of the TV show "Little House on the Prairie," several of the town characters are first introduced in the "Plum Creek" book, including mean Nellie Oleson. (Nellie in the book is just as awful as she was on the TV show -- she is always sneering at little Laura and making fun of her "country" ways. What a brat.)

These stories have held up well over time and are still excellent children's books, with one caveat about the blatant racism toward Indians in book 2, the one named "Little House on the Prairie." In that book, the family had moved to Kansas and knowingly settled in what was still Indian Territory (a foolish move, but there's no point arguing about it nearly 150 years later). After some tense situations with local tribes, the family leaves Kansas and heads back to Minnesota, where the story picks up in "Plum Creek." First the family lives in a dugout home, and then Pa builds a sturdy wooden house.

Thankfully there were no racist comments in "Plum Creek," just some good stories about homesteading in Minnesota, including a grasshopper plague that ruined the Ingalls' crops for several years, some intense and scary blizzards, and a prairie fire. Man, pioneering was rough!

Like the other Ingalls books, there are also some charming stories of happy Christmases, helpful neighbors, and their loyal dog, Jack. I enjoyed "Plum Creek" so much that I plan to continue rereading the series. And the next time I'm in Minnesota, I'm going to stop by that museum.

DNF-Pg 92
My mom and I were reading this together. Never got further lol

Every time I read another one of Laura’s books, I decide it is my favourite! This volume was very interesting and entertaining, and contained some of the stories I knew well. It is definitely in my top four favourites from the series!

This is definitely a captivating read. As someone who has grown up with the luxuries of running water, electricity and cell phones, it gave me a greater appreciation for modernity and respect for families like The Wilders who faced some pretty harsh situations with resilience and tenacity. The emphasis on family closeness is heartwarming as well.

Listened with the family to the great Cherry Jones read this on cd and it is really (again) so surprisingly good. Listening in the car from Davenport, Iowa back to Chicago to finish it, I can't recall stretches of road (gulp). What I recall is Pa telling his story of snow blindness and falling into a ditch in a blizzard and sleeping in a bearskin coat for a couple days under six feet of snow and then, when the storm clears, seeing he was very close to his Plum Banks home and trudging in. Makes RV camping as a way of engaging with the wilderness look a little tame, let's say.

Some great and memorable scenes: the leeches dance, the terrifying swarm of grasshoppers, the incredibly intense blizzard, followed by one of those sweet Wilder Christmases with almost nothing to share but oyster stew and no presents but Pa's guitar music and his blizzard survival story.

This is great autobiographical fiction, memoir, really, and a history of 1870's plains life for one (white!) family, a family facing nature as frightening as any Chthulu monster with some grace and music and game-playing and storytelling. A sweet, lyrical and evocative tale worth the name of classic. A great family story for a family to read or listen to. I am serious!

this is maria i am lisas daughter.i think the book was graet.my favrit part is when laura allmost drowns on the footbrige.the end was very exsiting whith the blizerds.i want to read the next book about this family.

I did not remember this one being so SAD. I could almost not get through that chapter about the grasshoppers coming.

I loved this book! I am currently rereading the entire Little House series, which I have not visited since I was a kid. I feel like the books just keep getting better. Since it had been such a long time since I read this, I had forgotten most of the plot and, consequently, it was almost like reading this for the first time.

I was left with a few unanswered questions. For example: What did they eat when Pa was away the first time? They had no money and all their crops were destroyed. What were the fireball things that came down from the stovepipe? Where did the grasshoppers come from and how did they know when to leave?

The girls are growing up in this, and Laura especially tests her boundaries a bit more than in the previous books. Sometimes Mary and Laura are downright naughty, but I think that makes the stories more realistic...and of course they usually come to see the consequences of their actions.  I thought that was a mean trick of Laura to play on Nellie (regarding the bloodsuckers), even if Nellie was mean and spoiled.

I loved the attention to detail (everything from Ma opening a letter with a hairpin to the joy accompanying a long-anticipated rain), the description, and emotion that just sweeps you into this family's life in such a personal way. I feel like Wilder is really an excellent writer, and her style really makes me feel like I am there on the prairie with the Ingallses. I also love how their pioneer spirit really shines through. In the midst of so many ups and downs they always find a way to keep up hope and to keep moving forward. It's inspiring!

{Listened on audio book narrated by Cherry Jones.}

Another read through of this, as a read-aloud to several children. This one is all about making the prairie into a home, being swamped with grasshoppers and surviving the winter.

I am finding that the re-reading of these as an adult reveals such a different picture. Charles and Caroline leave their hard won cabin on the prairie to move to a sod house cut into the banks of a creek. Imagine that in winter or flood. They finally build another house by borrowing money against their large wheat crop which is thriving on the land that Charles has cleared, foot by foot. The grasshoppers come and eat the lot, plus all the grass for the cows and horses and all the fruit coming on the trees. Not only that but they leave millions of eggs so that the following year literally millions of grasshoppers hatch out again and so there is no point in planting a crop. Charles has to leave his home to find work to feed the family - but so do all the other farmers in the area.

The sheer, unrelenting hard work of these pioneers is hard to imagine. The stories have a back-story that Laura as a little girl is not fully privy to - and Charles and Caroline must survive as best they can.

And of course, after all this, we know that they up sticks again for the next book!

Listening to the audiobooks for this whole series since I never read them as a kid.

This series is amazing. This mix of a lovely childhood and harsh life. Part of me would like to see some rules (regarding children) valid today.

And the story about grasshoppers... Wow!

Enjoyed the plot