Although Cynthia Rylant’s featured narrative certainly manages to successfully enough capture both Laura Ingalls Wilder’s writing style and a historically accurate feeling and sense of time and place (and yes, Jim LaMarche’s accompanying artwork is also very much aesthetically similar to the incomparable Garth Williams with regard to his expressiveness and loving attention to fine detail), personally and emotionally, I have in fact and indeed felt extremely and lastingly uncomfortable reading Old Town in the Green Groves: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Lost Little House Years. For while I have certainly found it sufficiently interesting and educationally enlightening to discover details regarding the Ingalls family’s life between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake (the two years when they were managing a hotel in Burr Oak, Iowa), considering that during this time, Caroline Ingalls gave birth to a son who only managed to live for a few months and that Laura Ingalls Wilder seems to have deliberately refused to write about this tragic and painful episode, well and in my opinion, Cynthia Rylant should have respected this and should NOT have penned a story based on the Ingalls family’s sojourn at Burr Oak, that Rylant should have respected the fact that Laura Ingalls Wilder obviously did not want to, did not feel up to writing about in particular her brother Charles Frederick’s birth and early death.

And yes, even though Little Town in the Green Groves: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Lost Little House Years reads flowingly and interest retaining, I for one do NOT think this novel should in fact have ever been published and that Cynthia Rylant kind of disrespects Laura Ingalls Wilder’s memory by writing and making public a story that the latter obviously had not wanted to be told to her readers, to the public (because really and truly, if Laura Ingalls Wilder had indeed wanted her readership to know about her baby brother’s life and early death and the family’s time in Burr Oak, Iowa, she obviously would have written about this).

Old Town in the Green Groves fill in part of the gab between two of the classic little house books: "On the Banks of Plum Creek" and "By the Shores of Silver Lake", and is not a "real" Little House book. But, again, I read the entire series so I wanted to read all the books now considered part of the Little House family.

I actually really liked this one more than I was expecting - These First Four Years was so awful in so many ways that I really didn't have high hopes for this one, yet I actually liked this one more than the last Little House book. It's not written by Laura, but definitely has the same feel/flavor, and the characters are just exactly the same. Ma & Pa are there wonderful selves, you get to see their cousins & a whole other life not previously seen in other books, and there's a horrible tragedy that the family lives through and it's just marvelous to see how they all manage. If you like the Little House series and haven't read this one, just skip "These First Four Years" and read this one, instead (but do read them in chronological order, as I wish I had but didn't).

It was wintertime in the prairie, and the things were changing all round Laura as she walking to school each morning. Laura loved the winter for its stillness but she also knew it could be cruel. Laura was not so worried about what surprise winter might bring this year, for pa had moved whole family from their farm on Plum Creek to a snug little rented house. Laura and her family is happy and safe in the town of Ingalls. One day when Laura and her sister came home from school. A big surprise is waiting for them!

Nice story but some part's of the story was sad..

Cynthia Rylant did a fine job with these stories. What a sad time in the Ingalls' family history.

Is it me, or is the writing style trying very hard to capture Laura's characteristically slightly stilted prose... and failing spectacularly? In the Little House books, there's a certain charm to the way Laura writes - it's stiff and formal and childlike in some ways, but it has a nice flow to it nonetheless. This is just... stiff and formal and childlike. But maybe I'm being too harsh. After all, I appreciate that someone took the time to write a book to fill the gap between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake (which was an overly long gap in which a lottttt of stuff happened, though this book actually doesn't cover as much of the space of time as I would have liked). And while it's not Laura, the writing is serviceable enough - at least it doesn't sound heinously different. There's a moment where people in the town are putting out a fire that I really liked, and that seemed very much in the spirit of the other books (though... I won't give too much away, but in that scene, the characters find something very amusing that definitely would not have been amusing if the fire had caused more damage).

Overall, I'd say this is a good one to read if you're really into anything of the time period, if you felt like the gap between Plum Creek and Silver Lake was just too long, or if you're a seriously die-hard fan of the series and want to read everything even vaguely related to it.

Where was Rose when you needed her?

Laura's Lost Years:
Stories about what happened between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake, the fourth and fifth novels by Ingalls Wilder, written by Cynthia Rylant based on notes from Laura Ingalls Wilder and other research.

Wonderful story of the lost, unaccounted years that Laura Ingalls Wilder did rarely mention in her other books. Setting is mainly Burr Oak Iowa where her family suffer fiinancial difficulties and the loss of her baby brother, Freddy.

This was a very sweet book. It maintained the integrity of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and characters very well, which is a tall order to follow. Cynthia Rylant is one of my favorite modern-day authors and I am a die-hard LHOTP fan (the books, not the show-obvi) so I had high expectations for this book. My daughters and I picked it up when we traveled to De Smet, SD to check out the town from Little Town on the Prairie. It chronicles Laura's life between the books of On the Banks of Plum Creek (where she lived in MN) and On the Shores of Silver Lake (where the Ingalls family eventually settled in SD). Laura herself did not write about this time in which she and her family moved temporarily to Iowa. It was a sad time for the family, as there was the birth and death of little brother Freddie and a series of illnesses that struck the family. This goes from their home in MN to their home in IA and stops once they decide to leave Iowa. Cynthia Rylant did a great job on the research of the book, as many of the stories in there were ones that Laura herself had written about in journals and other writings. The ONLY reason for 4-stars is that the word choices, inflection, and writing style is Rylant's. Of course, this isn't a bad thing by a long shot. It's a great thing, since Rylant's words are golden. It does, however, make the reader aware that it isn't a book in the series of of LHOTP. Fans of the series and of Laura should read it. It's a joy to hear the story imagined in the hidden part of the life of Laura.

I marked it as a four just because this book reminded me how much I love to read about this time era. A lot of hard, sad events happen in Laura's life during this time but her family is so strong. They endure and continue to work hard. No matter what hits them they are always trying to remain self sufficient, pay off their debts, and provide a loving home for their children. I love all the Little House books and I am glad I read this one.

This book fills in the "missing years" that Laura left out of the original series because she thought it was too sad. Written from Laura's original 12 pages of text and some good research, this book covers the birth and death of Baby Freddie and the birth of Grace.

I seem to be in the minority, but I didn't enjoy this book.

The whimsy and magic of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books were in the details rather than the overall plot and this book proves it. People remember the small moments in the books like Pa making bullets or Laura twisting hay to make fuel for the fire. These small moments breathe life into each book. and they're missing here.

This book has a lot of things happen, but it doesn't feel lived like the other books do. It feels like a list of events with things filled in around them. There's very little description of the places that they live or the chores that they do. There are many instances where the characters don't feel like themselves. Maybe they're closer to their real-life counterparts, but it didn't fit the tone of the other books.

The last thing I'll say is the simplicity of the language. This book is written with a simplicity that fits closer to Little House in the Big Woods than something after On the Banks of Plum Creek. The language has a childish bent to it, but without the whimsy of the first book. Because of that, it draws attention to just how simple it is. For example:

Laura smiled. Mary had always been the best one at learning. Mary had always been the best at everything. She was kindest. She was the most patient. She minded Ma better. And she wasn't a tomboy, like Laura was sometimes.

Maybe it's because I just finished reading through the entire series, but this version stands out and not in a good way. It's not fair to expect perfection or for someone to perfectly mimic the Laura writes/Rose edits goodness of the original series, but... I loved the recent Caroline novel and I expected something new, but it's own kind of good. (But what do I know? It's got a lower overall score than this book).