This is a good addition to the Little House books, but not a necessary one. Fans of the series may want to pick up this one if they want to revisit the series, but I don't think it's vital to the understanding of Laura's story.

I felt like Cynthia Rylant did a pretty decent job at keeping Laura's voice throughout this little book, although the one complaint that I had was that this particular book seemed like she was writing at a reading level that was just a little too low for my taste. Other than that, she captured what I loved about this series as a kid. I think this would be a good one to read with kids who enjoy the series.

It may seem kind of silly for an adult to read a children's book, but it was a fun and much lighter read than most of what I usually read. And I've read all of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls. This book was written to "fill in the blanks" of the time the Ingalls family spent in Burr Oak. I enjoyed it and felt it would make suitable reading for older children. It does deal with some difficult subjects, like the death of the Ingalls' son.

It was really fun to read a “new” story about the Ingalls family.
This story takes place between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake and depicts a time Laura didn’t write about in her original books.
The author based the story on some unpublished memoirs Laura had kept.
While it was a very nice and light read, it felt a bit choppy and it’s easy to see the story was pieced together off of minimal information, but it was very well done and is a great addition to the Laura I falls Wilder library. Highly recommend!

I truly enjoyed this book written from fragments of Laura’s letters as a homage to her by the wonderful children’s writer Cynthia Rylant. There are sad events- but through it all shine the love this family had for each other, for their neighbors and for the land and animals. As they move from place to place, the Ingalls family do what they have to do to survive and honor their commitments, all the while holding onto beauty where they find it, and to their faith. I read all the Little House books as a girl, and loved them a second and third time as I read them to my children. Kudos to Cynthia Rylant for this lovely book.

It is an okay read, although seems designed for ones younger than any book that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote for her series. It does give some information about Laura's life that she chose not to write about - perhaps her choice should have been honored. Does not really add anything to the series and thus is not necessary in order to enjoy LIW's own stories. It is also quite short compared to the majority of LIW's books.

This book covers the missing years of life for Laura Ingalls Wilder in Burr Oak. We traveled to Burr Oak to visit her environs while we were visiting De Smet, S. D. I feel that Cynthia Rylant did an excellent job working with the material that she had from Laura’s notes and following the theme that hey would be ok as long as they had each other.

This is the book that Laura Ingalls Wilder did not write, covering the years between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake. There are probably two reasons for this: it did not fit the arc of moving westward, and it included the death of her baby brother, Freddy. Unlike Wilder's books, this one has no real theme, just snapshots of what the Ingalls family's life was probably like at this time, based on Laura's brief writings about those years. However, since it does fill the gap, it is worth reading.

I wonder why Laura did not write this story.

I liked the book but it didn't fit in with where "by the shores of silver lake" began

I just learned that Cynthia Rylant wrote the "missing book" in the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. No wonder it fits perfectly with the rest.

Well Done.

Quick read. I loved all of the original books that I read as a kid. This one falls between On the banks of Plum Creek and By the shores of silver lake. It was written using notes left from Laura. This fills in the gaps including her younger brother’s death. I really enjoyed the story and it makes me want to go and read some of the other spinoff books. I might even go back and reread the originals. I’m glad I saw this mentioned on social media as I did not know it existed.

Laura Ingalls Wilder originally wrote out the story of her life in Pioneer Girl. When that manuscript was rejected several times, acting upon suggestions from editors, Laura reframed her narrative into a story for children about a pioneer family traveling west (p. 31). She left out a year that the family traveled back east due to the grasshopper infestations that twice ruined their crops and hopes in Plum Creek, although she had told of it in Pioneer Girl. Pamela Smith’s Hill’s notes on this section in Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography say:

She deliberately chose not to depict this part of her family’s experiences in her fiction. “It is a story in itself,” Wilder explained to Lane in 1937, “but does not belong in the picture I am making of the [fictional Ingalls] family (LIW tp RWL, [Dec. 1937 or Jan. 1938], Box 13, file 193, Lane Papers). Moving the fictional family east and not west would have undermined Wilder’s optimistic portrait of their resilient pioneer spirit. Furthermore, her experiences in Burr Oak were more urban, gritty, even edgy. Although Wilder introduced some adult ideas and themes into her later novels, she waited until the fictional family had moved west once more into Dakota Territory, where her main character was a more mature adolescent. Wilder herself was just nine years old when the family moved to Burr Oak (p. 95, note 99).

I’ve seen some criticism of Laura for leaving out the events that take place in Burr Oak. But I would defend her decision for several reasons. Everything I have read about memoirs and autobiographies says you can’t share everything. She did include this era in her original autobiography. The Little House books were fictionalized, focusing on the life and progress of a pioneer family. The time in Burr Oak might have seemed a stop or even a setback to the action. Plus the family’s proximity to a saloon and the unsavory behavior they saw and heard might not have seemed suitable to an audience of children at the rime she was writing.

But readers are curious about the “lost years” in the LH narrative. So Cynthia Rylant was asked to write what was known about the family’s story during this period in the style of the LH books. Her book is Old Town in the Green Groves.

The story begins back in Plum Creek, where the family contentedly moved from their winter rental house back to their farm. Baby brother Freddie was born. Ma was severely ill for a while, but recovered. Then the second wave of grasshoppers returned and destroyed everything growing. Pa declared he’d had enough of the “blasted country.” He had debts to pay, and the crop that would have paid them was ruined. Pa sold the farm to pay off the debts and lined up a job at a hotel in Burr Oak in Iowa.

On the way, the family stayed with their aunt and uncle and cousins, Peter and Eliza Ingalls and their children. They helped in various ways around the farm until ready to move on. Sadly, brother Freddie died there.

One chapter describes meeting with a kind beekeeper who was also planning to move since the bees couldn’t thrive without flowers. (Hill’s note on p. 96 of her book says Charles and this beekeeper kept in touch with each other for years).

When they arrived in Burr Oak, they lived above the hotel. Life was hectic: Ma helped with cooking and cleaning, and the girls all had to help, too. The saloon next door was loud, people were constantly coming in and out. Laura missed the quiet of her home and the prairie.

The book goes on to describe the various people they encountered and things that happened in Burr Oak before they decided to head west again.

I think Rylant did a good job. Just glancing over this section again in Pioneer Girl, I can see how Rylant took the narrative and fleshed it out. It’s more or less in the style of the LH books, but it’s not Laura: it couldn’t be.

I was glad to see the illustrations by Jim LaMarche in my library copy were also similar to the Garth William’s illustrations of the Little House books. Like the words, they were not quite the same, but they seemed a similar style and spirit.

On the back cover, the top says “Read all the Little House books.” The covers of all the books are shown, with this book set in-between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake. I’m assuming this was done to show that the action in this book takes place between those two. But, as fine as this book is, I would regard it as supplemental and wouldn’t include it as part of the set or as one of the LH books.

Though this book describes some of the hard times the family went through, it also shares their resilience and hope. It’s a good story in its own right, but especially for fans of the Little House books.