I read these as a young girl and loved them. That's about all I remembered about them, though. So I decided to read them again, and I'm so glad I did!

Reasons I loved these books:

1. They are clean and wholesome.
2. They teach responsibility and hard work.
3. They teach about gratitude and being happy with what you have instead of looking elsewhere for happiness.
4. FAMILY is emphasized and taught to be an important part of society. Laura's family is warm, loving, and kind.
5. After reading about all of the work that went into obtaining honey, cheese, eggs, grain, meat, oats, and butter, I'm grateful that I can make a quick trip to the grocery store and spend my time doing other things!

I enjoyed every character in this series. I especially loved Laura and grew to admire her throughout the series. She always wanted to be outside, enjoying nature. She wasn't big on sitting around for any extended amount of time. She was strong-willed and opinionated, yet well-mannered and feminine when needed. She was a true pioneer and worked hard for everything that she achieved in her life.

I also enjoyed the fact that there was a strong father figure in these books, who loved his girls and taught them to work for their dreams. I was annoyed with the fact that he continued to uproot his family, but if he had quit the first time around, and everyone else had, too, then we wouldn't have the good country that we do today.

This book isn't politically correct in some places, and it gave me a taste of what it was like to live back then. I'm grateful to be living today, but there are so many things to be learned from these great people!

I better stop now before this gets too long. I'm going to buy all of these books because I will be reading them again, and again, and again...

This isn't five stars for Laura's (or Rose's?) writing style. This isn't five stars for the page-turning, blood-pumping excitement here, nor for the complex plot, as this series has neither of those things. This isn't five stars for current popularity. This isn't five stars for the impact these books have on my current life. This is five stars for a time gone by: Laura's childhood, and mine. Growing up, I didn't just read about Laura Ingalls--I wanted to be her, and was her to some degree. Whenever I re-read any of these books, I get a funny little nostalgic ache, and for that, I owe this series every one of those five stars.

These books were such a good diversion for me as a young child. I was Heidi in 3rd grade and then Laura in 4th. I loved them all. I know they aren't literary greats and there is some stretching of truth... but they were so important to me growing up.

My elementary school library had these books but I avoided reading them because I thought that they were "girl's books." That was my loss, for I would have enjoyed them. Some twenty years later my wife and I read them to our children, which was my first direct experience with some of the stories. Now, the Library of America has "canonized" these books by including them in its collection of American writing. Published without illustrations, they seem somewhat more adult than the familiar editions. Wilder writes with direct,concrete, simple prose that effectively communicates her experiences. I particularly enjoyed the detailed depiction of 19th century pioneer life, both its struggles and its joys. Highly recommended.

More girlie books that I actually liked. Then again, I was 6. The Little House series is pretty much the quintessential reading for young girls: adventures, hardships, girliness, life on the prairie.

I read the first two books in the series quickly (the ones almost everyone reads), but then kind of trailed off. I don't know why; perhaps as I got older the books just couldn't hold my attention anymore, or I got tired of the adventures, hardships, girliness, and life on the prairie. By late elementary school I went back and finished the last couple that I had put off reading, and they weren't bad.

Love the entire series , I have read these books since I was a young girl myself! I feel like I grew up with Laura Ingalls Wilder stories - I even bought the cookbook to try some of the recipes she made and grew up with

Most people love these novels, and I can't for the life of me understand why. I was given the collection growing up and read them, but I never cared much for them and never re-read them.

These books were the best i ever read! LOVE THEM!!! they are awesome!

I read the American Heritage set and realize my opinion was highly maligned based on my opinion of the television series of the 1970's. I had expected a romanticized saccharine account of the glory of being a pioneer and rah-rah! jingoistic Americana. I probably rate the series higher than I should to make up for my misjudgment.

To be fair, the books are written for 8-12 year old's. I don't think I would dare put this series in the hands of a kid just because they could read it. There is some serious conversations to be had about the religious heritage of this country and the evolution of gender relations and economics and climate change and fossil fuels and race relations and ecology.....ooh boy. These novels made me shake my head and think, my God what have we done?

I love the fact that they are fictional, and I love the juicy history of the real Wilder women. They certainly were not shrinking violets but they aren't heroic either. They are survivors. And isn't that really what we celebrate in this country.

Much of Laura's mother's dialogue in the books presented itself as cliche. She quotes her contemporary cultural time woodenly. It is difficult to feel any empathy for her as a willing participant in this pioneering enterprise in which she finds herself martyred. The religious content of the novels are presented rather comically without depicting the true weight behind the protestant Great Awakening and Manifest Destiny. This could be the error of the reader, I was somewhat incredulous of the naivete of the characters optimism.

All in all the stories are wonderful and wild and I do admit I read them with great admiration for the courage of these people. I highly recommend the books - these are the stories that frame our American culture. We are still a young country.

Read these when I was a kid, and now I have the urge to read them again.

Like so many people, I read and loved these books as a girl. When my son was an infant and I was looking for something to entertain me during his marathon bouts of nursing, I decided to read the series again. I still found it immensely enjoyable, but with one striking difference: When I was a child, Pa Ingalls seemed like the coolest dad on the planet - he played the fiddle, made his own bullets and took his family on all sorts of adventures all over the unsettled west. As an adult, however, I thought Pa came off like a flakey dreamer who put his family through years of hell, always claiming "Caroline! If you just put up with backbreaking labor, mortal danger and starving kids for a few years, just watch! This expanse of desert/marsh/frozen tundra will become the breadbasket of the world and make us rich as kings!" How Ma Ingalls put up with his crazy schemes for so long is a testament t her patience/holy doormat-ness. On re-reading, I thought the series must be missing the volumes "Little House on the San Andreas Fault", "On the Slopes of Angry Volcano" and "By the Toxic Tidepools of Three-Mile Island."

Another set I read when I was younger. I think I've read them all at this point, but not in any order. I read a few for school projects, a few for myself, and a few to mom as a teen, this is another set I would like to try a reread for.