I Remember Laura: Laura Ingalls Wilder

I highly recommend for anyone interested in learning more about Laura Ingalls Wilder. It is fascinating to realize how much she lived through in her lifetime! The stories of her pioneer childhood will endure forever, but this book includes some of her columns for her local paper about farming, including several relating to World War I. There are also remembrances from people in her town in Missouri, where she settled for the last 50 years of her life, so the book gives a broader picture of Laura Ingalls Wilder as an adult.

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This was a fascinating book to read. Had a lot of fun and interesting facts about LIW that I had never read before. There were letters, anecdotes, and cute stories from some of Laura and Almanzo’s neighbors and friends in Mansfield, Mo. A book all LIW fan’s should have in their collections.

I enjoyed the insight into Laura Ingalls Wilder in this collection of writings. I was looking for a more comprehensive biography and found this book at our local library. Newspaper columns written by and about Wilder and her daughter Rose and memories from neighbors and townspeople provide a picture of a self-sufficient woman who, through the notoriety of her writer daughter who also wrote about the pioneering life, understood her childhood stories might be of interest to readers. She probably didn't know how popular she would become, especially after the television series inspired by her books.

My husband and I visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri, when we were on a cross-country roadtrip in November, 2022. (East Meets West -- ME2AK) Wilder wrote the Little House series here and published her first Little House book when she was 65 years old. What an inspiration for an aspiring writer!

The recollections were written with a noticeable timestamp of language and ideals of the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Wilder wrote about the role of women during World War I. "Who'll Do the Women's Work?" asked important questions about the role of women in the workplace after World War I.

"It makes our hearts thrill and our heads rise proudly to think that women were found capable and eager to do such important work in the crisis of war-time days. I think that never again will anyone have the courage to say that women could not run world affiars if necessary. Also, it is true that when men or women have advanced they do not go back. History does not retrace its steps." (April 5, 1919)

Conversely, Wilder was remembered for less worldly ideas. At the dedication of the Mansfield Public Library named after her, she was lauded not only for the books she wrote but for her poultry raising, needlework, and gingerbread baking skills. Friends and neighbors shared their memories and admitted how they would have gotten to know her better if they knew how famous she would become.

Although not a comprehensive biography, "I Remember Laura" paints a few of the layers to give us a picture of Wilder's adult years in Mansfield. Published in 1994, a complete biography did not exist at the time, and the author specifically addressed the need for one in the section, "Unsolved Mysteries." In 2017, Caroline Fraser wrote Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017.) I have yet to read Prairie Fire. I thought I would find it at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum Gift Shop. I like to get books from the library or used book stores, so I will keep an eye out for it, espeially now that my curiosity is piqued.b

An unanswered question I have about the Little House books is how they reconcile with the truth of U.S. history and how native Americans were expelled from the land that the Ingalls family homesteaded. Did Wilder or the representatives of her legacy ever acknowledge that for the Ingalls to pioneer and homestead, the U.S. government forced the native people of the land to move or be killed?

In the final piece in the book, "Laura Ingalls WIlder: Our Special Lady" Debbie Von Behren wrote that Wilder's books taught, "old-fashioned values or respect, truthfulness, honest labor, family pride, and love for our fellow man."

We can't hold the young Laura Ingalls Wilder responsible for the conditions of the United States during her childhood. But it would be nice to know that someone telling her story -- and her story is still being told -- include the truth of what happened on the land before the Ingalls arrived on the prairie. What conditions allowed Laura Ingalls Wilder to grow up on the prairie? Who lived there before her, and where did they go?

It was definitely a great read but I found it dragged in some places. It was definitely a disappointment if your looking for the woman you loved through the Little House tv series but it's an excellent account of the real life Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I recently re-read this book because of Pioneer Girl and I noticed that Ma's maiden was spelled Quinter and found it very odd that this was not corrected. After all this time and I just realized this misspelling.

This book was filled with interesting little known facts. I enjoyed learning more about Rose and chuckled when I found out that Almanzo was only 5 foot 4. This would be a good start for a report about life during those times. Great for those who wanted to know more about her life. This one is wonderful to read with your children.

Oh, Laura. Growing up the Little House Books were some of my favorites, and I still reread them often. For years The Long Winter came with me on every trip, car or plane.

I enjoyed all of the memories people shared and it gave me a sense of what she was like in her later years. I most enjoyed the chapter on several enduring Ingalls/Wilder family mysteries.

When I got to the end and read the obituary printed in the Mansfield paper, I nearly started bawling. As irrational as it is, I think, to me, she is perennially alive in her books, which made reading the obits difficult. Long live Laura!