This was a really short book. Now I know why it's not part of the Laura Ingalls Wilder collection. It's rather depressing.

Doesn't even come close to the real Little House books. Odd that someone even tried.

Sadly, this is another book that I would have loved to read at eight or nine years old, but didn't find until I had grown too old for them. The simple stories don't entertain me so much now, but there is always such a peacefulness in the Little House books that I can't help but enjoy reading them.

Laura Ingalls Wilder left behind only a dozen pages of memories about her family’s time spent in Burr Oak, Iowa. Cynthia Rylant used those pages to write this novel about what life might have been like for the Ingalls family. Cynthia Rylant is one of my favorite children’s authors so I was very interested to read this. It is a dear tribute to Laura Ingalls and all that her family endured during these years that were undocumented in the Little House series. I thought Rylant did justice to Wilder and her books.

Cynthia Rylant totally missed the boat on this one. She added a super saccharine piety, in what I can only assume was an attempt to make the book seem old fashioned. Has she ever read Laura's work? She seemed to miss the honesty that's present in the real series, and the no-nonsense response to survival amidst trying and sometimes tragic circumstances. While none of the little house spin-offs can really hold a candle to the original series, this was the only book that I found truly awful.

I like how they moved around a lot but in the end they moved back pretty much where they started. Back west.

Transported me back to my childhood when I was reading the Little House books!

Helped me understand a bit more of the daily living aspect of colonialism and country/wooded American living in the 1800s.
Still pretty mid—didn’t have a big connection to it.

I love Laura Ingalls Wilder and thought I'd give this a try. This was not quite Laura Ingalls Wilder quality. I think she tried but there were some odd things in the book. The part about the woman wanting to adopt Laura was kind of bizarre. It was an ok book.

This didn't measure up to the original Little House books, of course, but was an interesting fictionalization of the gap between "On the Banks of Plum Creek" and "By the Shores of Silver Lake."

I didn't know this book existed until I came face-to-face with it as it sat on a book stand in the children's section of a small branch library in our county. As a child I read--and reread--all of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. A few years ago, I reread them all while performing research for a project I have not yet published.

The book is set between the winter of 1875 and the winter of 1877, which means Laura was eight-years-old when this story begins. Laura Ingalls Wilder did not write about this period in her life when she wrote the other Little House books. This period falls between book 4, 'On the Banks of Plum Creek,' and book 5, 'By the Shores of Silver Lake.'

The author, Cynthia Rylant, shares in the Foreword of this book that Mrs. Wilder ". . . penned only a dozen pages about this part of her life, and those pages were never published." Cynthia Rylant used the few written notes Mrs. Wilder left to write this book when she was requested by the publisher to write about this period in Laura's childhood.

The book was an enjoyable read, and I got some answers to questions I had about the differences in characters in the Little House television show versus the books. At one point a statement is made in this book about Laura's personality that didn't mesh with my interpretation of her character traits in the nine books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. This got me to thinking about how readers may interpret characters differently than perhaps the author intended them to be.

This story includes many sad events and misfortunes, some catastrophes caused by nature, and other misfortunes caused by poor decision-making. I feel readers who immerse themselves in this story will experience some tender emotions along with some fun while reading about the Wilder's family lifestyle, travels, and strength when faced with adversity.

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Not a bad attempt to fill in the missing year's of Laura's life. A little to simply written but still enjoyable.