It is a joy to experience these books again by listening to them on audio. A great option for a family road trip when several ages are travelling. I am amazed at the amount of work it required to survive on the prairie. Great respect for our pioneers.

Compared to the first book, this one was a lot more interesting. And, again, it had all those great memories of me reading this when I was a kid!
The book started with the family moving away from the only home they'd known, and making a new life on the prairie. I loved reading that part. It wasn't like how they were when they were living in a house. There, it was all about how they sewed, or how they played with their dolls. When they were just starting out their new lives, they had to build everything from scratch. It was interesting reading about how they made their own house. It was impressive that they did that, and built a well, and on and on. Pa even managed to build a rocking chair, because he was "too sore to work". That was his idea of a casual weekend. My idea of a casual weekend is blobbing out in my pjs in bed. This family never stopped working.
I liked seeing how they treated the Indians, too. Ma was completely racist. She was so afraid of them, even though they'd done nothing wrong. Pa was sure that they would kick them out of their country, so that the whites could settle there. Laura spent half the trip saying how much she wanted to see a papoose, an Indian baby. Then when she saw one, she wanted to keep it for her own. Luckily, Pa and Laura actually treated them like people. Pa told Ma countless times not to be afraid of them. But he was one of the different ones. It was crazy seeing how separated they were, and how superior the whites believed themselves to be.
Again, this wasn't as good as I remembered it. It's quite a short book, luckily, or I think I would've got bored. But it is nice to get to go back to my childhood through these books again

Picked up this book and first book after rewatching the series on tv. I thought it was about time to read at least one of the books. So far, the tv series is loosely based on books. Appreciation for the book but tv series is a little more action filled.

Oof. The ending with the departure of the Native Americans and then the Ingalls family hit me way harder than I was expecting.

3.5 stars

I read this a couple times as a little kid a very long time ago. I found it a tad slow then.

Laura is about 6-7 here. The family leaves Wisconsin and heads off into Kansas. They pick a random spot and build a house. The first half of the book is building the house (a log cabin)—the walls, roof, floor, chimney, etc. (I’m sure an outhouse was built in there somewhere.) People today will look at all this in shock at how unsafe everything is. People back then were like, “danger, shmanger.”

The rest of the book is mostly encounters with the American Indians. This is pretty interesting to observe anthropologically speaking. Pa is trying to be diplomatic while Ma is just terrified of them and wishes they’d all disappear. (“If you don’t like Indians, why’d you move to their country?” ask the kids.) After about a year, they have to leave when they realize they’re on official Indian land that the government is going to take away (yet).

It’s a fascinating, intimate look at a time and place and people that are increasingly distant and foreign to us here and now.

The audiobook features a violinist playing the actual tunes mentioned in the book; the narrator sings the lines.

Yikes

Good lord I forgot how racist this book is. Every time I enjoyed a description of some book or activity, the anti-native American shit would start again. Yikes.

সুন্দর ছিমছাম গল্প। লরা, মেরি, আর ছোট্ট ক্যারি। সদা সুখী এক পরিবারের গল্প, যারা শত দুঃখ কষ্টের মধ্যেও সুখী। এই সুখের বেদনা নিয়ে এগিয়ে যাচ্ছে অন্য সুখের আশায়।

এই সিরিজটা প্রিয় হয়ে যেতে লাগছিলো..... "ফার্মার বয়" বইটা পড়ে মোহমুগ্ধ হয়ে যাচ্ছিলাম।

কিন্তু এই বইটাতে এসেই যেন পুরো নক্ষত্রের পতন! নেটিভ আমেরিকানদের "বর্বর অসভ্য" হিসেবে ফুটিয়ে তোলা, নেটিভদের বিপক্ষে শ্বেতাঙ্গদের করা জাতিঘৃণার পক্ষের অযৌক্তিক সব যুক্তি, সেসবের নির্লজ্জ উপাখ্যানের "গর্বময় প্রকাশ" দেখে হতাশ। আশা রাখি- এই নির্লজ্জ ইতিহাসগুলো মুছে যাবে না।

A Review by Eleanor and Gwendolyn with my thoughts at the end.

Ok guys, if there's ONE thing that reminds you of Little House on the Prairie, what would it be? Eleanor?

Eleanor: Going to the WEST! And Pet and Patty too. Pet and Patty pushing... When they hitch up Pet and Patty.

Me: Gwennie, who are Pet and Patty?

Gwennie: A horse. They're a horse.

Me: Gwen, what do you think of when I say, "Little House on the Prairie?"

G: Uhh... we have to... we have to listen.

Me: What do you mean?

Gwen: Because me and Ellie have to listen.

Me: But why does Little House remind you of that?

Eleanor: Mary and Laura listened in Little House, while they were driving in the wagon to the prairie.

Me: Who did they listen to?

E: They listened to Pa.

Me: What else do you want to say about Little House?

E: Mary and Laura crossed the creek and they COULDN'T find Jack!.

Me: I put a spoiler there.

E: What's that?

Me: Well, you wouldn't want other people to know that if they didn't read the book, right? Because you were surprised.

E: Yeah, and mommy's going to read it. ...the review.

Me: Yeah.

E: Also, they were camping AND THEY FOUND JACK!!!!

Me: I put another spoiler in - is that ok?

E: M-hm. That's ok.

Me: Gwennie do you want to say anything? She's been playing with my fingers while I type and singing this whole time.

Gwen: (humming) nope. (humming)

Me: How many stars should I give Little House?

E: Ummmmm... count how many stars. Give it 6! stars. Ok dad?

Me: The most you can give it is 5.

E: OK! 5 Stars! Because then it'll be my exaAact age.

Me: But how much did you like it? 5 stars means a WHOLE LOT! 1 star means you didn't like it. 3 stars means you liked it a little bit.

E: 5 STARS! So I liked it a WHOOOOLE lot. But there's a little bit of a one star sort of, because I didn't like it when they had  to leave the prairie

Me: Why not?

E: Because when that happened, they were already in the prairie, and they  thought they were gonna live there forever.

Me: So, should I only give it 4 stars?

E: What does 4 stars mean?

Gwen: LOOK! Putting a picture from a Junie B. Jones book directly in my face... (I can't see the computer screen.)

Me: 4 Stars means you liked it a whole lot, but there were a couple things that you wished were different.

E: Still give it 5.

Me: Ok. Gwennie, how many stars should I give Little House?

G: 1 Star.

Me: 1 Star? Why 1 star?

G: Because I ... Hey, HOW ABOUT 3 STARS!!!!

Me: Why 3 stars?

G: Because I'm 3.

Me: But how much did you like the book? Did you like it a whole lot?

G: Yeah, but I want 1 star.

Me: But Gwennie, that doesn't make sense. We're gonna keep it at 5. You didn't even stay in for the whole book. Ok, Eleanor. Is there anything else you want to say? Any other lessons from the book? Anything Pa always said?

E: He said, "NO, SCOTT! I DON'T want to be taken away by the soldiers like an outlaw," really sharply. And Ma listened out the window.

Me: What else did he say?

E: "I got myself a plow," he said it like that when he bought stuff for Mary and Laura. And another one, "OK. Now I'm gonna MILK HER!" He said it about the cow.

Me: Why'd he say it like that?

E: Because the cow kicked him real hard. Kicked him like this *Eleanor hit herself on the leg and stomach* I made my fingers and thumb kick my tummy.

Me: Yeah, I hear ya. Did Pa say anything else?

E: Ummm... he said, "Alls well ends well..."

Me: When did he say that?

E: When everything was ok. He said it when the well was ok, when the house was ok. You know.

Me: Yeah, I know. Give me one more.

E: Ok... and he also said, "I might get some glass in the spring time for the windows." Ok dad? That's the LAAAAAST thing. Ok, read the review.

Me: Ok.

*EDIT*
(After posting and reading the review Eleanor was bummed that we didn't have more things Pa said. I told her it was her fault for "taking the easy way out" and only listing a few. So, she said she wanted to go back and list some more.

Me: Ok, go ahead.

E: "STEP BACK, LAURA!" Because Laura went very too close to the colt. The colt's name is baby Bunny.

Me: Huh. Of all the things you could pick out, I'm always surprised by what they are... give me another one.

E: One more, this is tiring.

Me: I know, but remember, when we go back and reread this, you'll happier if you have more... Ok, go ahead.

E: Um. Um. ... When Pa built a door without a doorknob.

Me: But what did Pa say?

E: I don't know what Pa said. He should have taken another peg and put it in loose like a doorknob.

Me: What did you learn about doors when we read that part?

E: In chapter 8. Chapter 8 is the one.

Me: I'm not asking what chapter it was in, I'm asking what you learned about doors.

E: They swing on a hinge.

Me: What's a hinge?

E: A part that holds the door up. I pretended with my finger.

Me: Ok. Is that it?

E: Ok. One more. When Ma hit her foot with the log when they were building the house, and Pa said, "I should have used skids." ...Ok, read it again.


*Second Edit*

I know this is was reviewed by Eleanor, but I wanted to put in a couple of my own thoughts.

The whole settler/Manifest Destiny thing is interesting - and Laura's conflicting thoughts on it as a child are as well. Little House paints a picture that neither depicts the settlers as innocent, nor as people going and stealing land. A great failure of historians (and these aren't my own thoughts) is to look at an event after the fact and attribute thoughts and motivations that weren't there at the time - judging the past based on the present. Granted, it's impossible to avoid this completely, but we should be aware of this tendency and fight against it.

So entertaining and so racist.

Is this the book where we start to learn how flawed Ma and Pa really are? Pa is certainly a happy-go-lucky guy with no foresight - taking his wife and daughters away from their family into the middle of nowhere (which by the way belongs to Indians), almost getting them drowned, burned and sick of malaria. And Ma, only concerned with propriety and never saying "no" to Pa's foolish ideas.

I'd be really worried to be married to someone like Pa, even though he plays his fiddle well and is handy with an axe.

"Het kleine huisje op de prairie" - indelible impression when my parents read it to us (my one-year-older brother and me) when I was six or seven years old ... now, half a century later, I first listened* to its original English version ... and it has lost nothing of its appeal - great story-telling: in one short paragraph Ingalls Wilder manages to convey a complete short story where other "great writers" need endless pages. A full five stars.
* There are two audio versions of this book on Youtube. I recommend the one read by Beverley Volfie. Cherry Jones does a great job as a narrator as well - but her (many) attempts at singing, accompanied by whining violin music, are more than awful.

Would give it a solid 4 stars, but the misinformation about Native Americans and racism toward them is evident in her writing. The phrase ‘the only good Indian was a dead Indian’ depicts the true feeling toward the native American's. How can we write books for children that foster understanding and empathy? After all, it was their land that was taken, and yet they were labeled as ‘savages.’ Who, then, is the true savage?