I have found that I'm enjoying these books just as much as my kids. I had totally forgotten about the Ingalls family having a fourth daughter. The excitement from taking the train to join Charles/Pa was exhilarating. I don't think I would have had the poise or courage to take belongings and 4 daughters on such a journey alone. Numerous explainations of food and the way things are prepared, along with intermittent illustrations, and occassional internet & YouTube searches have helped us make connections and fully grasp what is happening. I'm fairly certain my daughter and I both audibly gasped when there was a mention of Royal and Almanzo. We can feel their eventual meeting coming. Sigh.

Peaceful

This book from the Little House series is peaceful and content. I have visited the land they set up their farm on so it is very dear to my heart! I even spent the night on their homestead!

I've been enjoying the Little House books so far because the writing is always so beautiful but this one was definitely a miss for me. Let's count all the ways that this series is starting to grate on me:

1- How many times is this family going to move? I mean seriously. Every single book. It gets old. I am tired of reading about them packing up and traveling and unpacking. Every. Single. Book.
2- It seems almost like there is a book missing between book four and this one. It starts with Laura informing everyone that the family recently all contracted scarlet fever and Mary went blind. What?! Where is that book?? Why wasn't that a complete book on it's own?
3- Ma is the biggest self-righteous racist there is.
4- Pa is a loser. Let's just be honest about this. I think if he was alive today he would be the one posting chain mails on your Facebook wall and privately messaging you asking if you wanted to join his pyramid scheme. He is not a good provider for his family. He takes too many risks and drops everything at the drop of a hat to race off into the wilderness to try something new.
5- And Mary is just a smug asshole.
6- What was with all the hokey songs??

The best part of the whole book was where Almanzo's family was mentioned, tbh. Super boring.

So Mary went blind in between books and it was just barely touched on? Weird, but okay. This book was pretty exciting in its events, as has been the trend. I can't imagine how terrifying to be entirely by yourselves on the prairie like that, especially with the men threatening Pa.

Wow, I did not remember this book much at all. The book skips two years in the saga because of sad events: the birth and death of an infant brother, Mary going blind (from viral meningoencephalitis, not scarlet fever, which is really untreated strep throat), and financial ruin. The book opens with the family’s sudden move to a place near (future) De Smet, South Dakota. They go by train, traveling at the break-neck speed of 20 mph!

The only people out this wilderness are mostly single men working to level the ground for the coming railroad. There is a sense of fear about them, especially when Pa is not around. It was not a good idea to be female and alone in that kind of environment.

The book covers about a year, with Laura age 12. She is leaving childhood behind and starting to take on adult responsibilities. As a result, the book has a more somber tone.

Language: Clean
Sexual Content: None
Violence/Gore: Mob violence, not graphic
Harm to Animals: Family dog dies of old age at beginning
Harm to Children: None
Other (Triggers): Mention of child marriage, anti-American Indian sentiments

The book opens with the household sick due to Scarlet Fever; Mary is blind. There were some eloquent quotes about this: Mary asks Laura to "“See out loud for me, Laura, please.” "And now I see it all. You make pictures when you talk, Laura.” The family moves yet again, further West this time and there is a race for Pa to claim his homestead. Ma and the girls take their first train ride. "There had never been such wonders in the whole history of the world, Pa said. Now, in one morning they had actually traveled a whole week’s journey." This book didn't have a lot of excitement like the previous book but Almanzo (AKA Farmer Boy) makes an appearance.

I listened to By the Shores of Silver Lake with my sons (9 & 11) and I'm thrilled that they love this series as much as I do! I read the Little House series over and over again growing up and I love that I get to share it with my boys.

Laura sure is growing up, as are the other girls.

Again, I polled the boys for their favorite parts. It's always interesting to see what sticks in their heads. Both of them liked the brief moment toward the end when Laura sees Almanzo for the first time, driving his team down the center street of the fledgling town of De Smet. They'd been waiting to see when their paths would cross and were gratified to know it finally happened. And they were sad that Mary had lost her sight.

Josh loved the part where Laura and her cousin Lena were riding the black ponies with wild abandon on the open prairie. Will said, and I quote, "The Christmas chapters are always the best."

Re-reading these books as an adult, I'm much more aware of the Ingalls family's dire financial situation, how many times they lost just about everything due to circumstances outside their control like the weather or crickets or whatever, and how often had to start over with practically nothing.

The edition I read is the same edition I read as a little girl a quarter of a century ago. And I never recall noticing before that pages 149-164 of my copy of By the Shores of Silver Lake are actually page 149-164 of These Happy Golden Years. So I borrowed the book from a friend to fill in that 15 page gap. Weird...

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So I am trying to read more classics and this is one of them. I admit I picked this because of the horse on the cover while having no idea what the story is actually about. And apparently it's the fifth book in a series although this certainly can be read on it's own because that is what I just did.

So what is this about? It's about a family in 1880 moving west to an area near Silver Lake (although they don't seem to say what state this is? Oh its the Dakota Territory so its not a state yet) on the wide open prairie. The father gets a job with people building a train track - not the actual track but getting the ground ready for a track. The book describes this process although I didn't fully understand it (except in a more simple way: remove dirt from one area and put it in another area to make it all nice & level)...

The main character is young Laura and she has several sisters: Mary, Grace and Carrie. Basically the story is about their everyday life and the little adventures they had living on the prairie, including staying there through the winter. And the fervor is getting a claim for land.

I did enjoy this story. It's entertaining and interesting to see how they lived: what they ate, how they made Christmas gifts for each other in secret, the strange people that were passing through and how their presence affected the wildlife. Some of the descriptions were really amazing, like how two of the girls went outside onto the frozen lake in winter during a full moon and slid on the ice.

I think my favorite scene in here was when Laura rode the pony that belonged to her cousin. She had never ridden before but was bold enough to go at a crazy gallop with no experience at all and without a saddle! But she clearly loved it and I could see by the end of the book she had clearly caught the horse "bug" as she was eying very special horses that were going by! It makes me curious about other books in the series. Will she continue and maybe indulge her love of horses somehow? I have no idea.

The edition I read has nice black and white drawings at the start of each chapter.

"I like the one part with the train. But not the buffalo wolves." -Conley, age 5

3.5