One of the things I love about this series is how the prose grows with the protagonist. Four-year-old Laura lives in a world with short sentences and simple feelings, and thirteen-year-old Laura, who has had to broaden her vocabulary to help describe things to her blind sister, inhabits a text that is intricately described and which gives a broader overview of events and situations.

Still a wonderful book in a wonderful series, but this one lacks the memorable moments of the others, and Mary is blind, which shocked me as a child.

Re-reading these is just so fun. I extra loved reading all the winter/Christmas chapters!

This is not my favorite out of the Little House books, but still a really good story! The writing is beautiful, and the more I reread this series, the more I love it!

In this book, Laura and her family are following the railroad where her father has a job keeping the books and distributing the men's pay. But the railroad men are a rough group, and Laura worries for her father's safety. Once the railroad has finished their work, the Ingalls family stays the winter in the surveyors cabin. But as soon as spring begins, there are settlers rushing in to stake a claim on the surrounding land. Mr. Ingalls will have to be quick to get his claim registered before all the land is gone.

It's interesting to see how Laura and her sisters are a little more wild and free in this book. There is no town, no neighbors to see, so their behavior is a little more unreserved. They are influenced by their wild cousins who gallop around on ponies, hooting and playing. Their mother doesn't like it though, and urges them to behave properly and wear their sunbonnets.

In the other books of this series, the greatest enemy of the family is nature itself. They have to survive the grasshoppers who eat all their crops. They have to survive the harsh winters and wild weather. But in this book, we see the threats from other people. Rough railroad men who swear and steal and get drunk. Robbers who sneak up behind you on the trail. Or claim jumpers who would murder just to get the land you live on.

Despite all the dangers, the Ingalls family meet life on the prairie with courage and resilience and a cheerful heart!

Once again, Charles Ingalls goes out of his way to keep his family in danger and poverty, making one idiotic decision after another.

Caroline Ingalls says "Oh, Charles" and goes right on enabling his stupidity.

The author's blind affection for her idiot father is infuriating.

Clearly not my favorite book in the series. She has lots of descriptions of the scenery which is hard for me to enjoy.

I have ordered hardcover copies of the whole series. I just love Laura's point of view and learning more about life back when the United States was not yet the USA we know today.

The Ingalls have been living on the banks of Plum Creek for several years when Aunt Docia comes by en route to join her husband who is working on building a railroad to offer a job to Pa to run the company store and handle the payroll. Things haven't been going particularly well with growing wheat, and Mary has just gone blind after she, Ma, Carrie and the new youngest child Grace have had scarlet fever. The pay is good, Pa and Laura are itching to move west, so in the end Ma agrees since there will be a town and a school nearby once they stake a claim.

There are new adventures and dangers await, of course--these are pioneers, after all--but there are a few fun surprises as well, including meeting up with long unseen relatives, unexpected stores and unexpectedly running into at least one familiar face from other places (not Nellie Oleson in this book.)

So yes, in By the Shores of Silver Lake (the fifth of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie novels) it quickly becomes abundantly clear that not only is Laura growing up and facing increased domestic and social responsibilities and pressures as a thirteen year old, but that textually and content wise, Wilder is clearly also demonstrating that she believes her young readers are by the fifth series instalment obviously mature enough to handle some rather heavy-duty issues and themes (not only Mary’s sudden illness caused blindness but indeed that even just making a homestead claim could be a potentially dangerous undertaking, not to mention that Charles Ingalls’ job as company storekeeper and earnings distributor at the railroad camp might well bring an appreciated fifty dollars per month salary for the family but is equally not entirely safe especially on payday with mobs of roving and sometimes raging workers demanding their salaries and often being fuelled by drunk and disorderly behaviours).

But thankfully, Laura Ingalls Wilder still does not ever fall into the trap of making By the Shores of Silver Lake into some kind of one disaster after another wallowing, that while heavier and more uncomfortable scenarios are of course being portrayed, they are also juxtaposed and interspersed with episodes of joy, laughter and tenderness (and that even with regard to Mary’s blindness, both she and her family are first and foremost glad that the scarlet fever did not claim her life). Delightfully historically realistic, and I also do appreciate that By the Shores of Silver Lake seems to portray considerably more nuance with regard to development and progress, that for example, while Charles Ingalls and his family are clearly supportive of westward expansion, they also seem to at least partially realise that this has been tragic for Native Americans and for the Buffalo (and yes, that Charles Ingalls is good friends with Métis Big Jerry and that even generally prejudicial Caroline Ingalls tends to become a bit less vindictive against Native Americans by the end of By the Shores Of Silver Lake also does make me smile).

Four stars for By the Shores of Silver Lake, but lowered to a high three stars, as I personally would definitely have liked it (and desired it) had Laura Ingalls Wilder featured her older sister Mary just a trifle more prominently and also textually expanded on Mary’s blindness and how she learns to deal with this (for just reading that Mary Ingalls is patient and uncomplaining about her affliction, about suddenly becoming blind is just not enough information to and for me, since as an avid reader I really would like to know how studious and book loving Mary is able to face and deal with no longer being able to read and do her school work).

3.5 stars
Continuing the audiobooks for this series I never read as a child.

Such a lovely book of the series!

This was always my least favorite of the Little House books, so I tried to read it with a more interested and knowing eye this time, and liked it better. So impressed with how LIW is aware of both the story arc for the individual book, and for the series as a whole by this time. She introduces Almanzo here, and brings back many characters - some of them fictional - from previous books (Aunt Docia, Mr. Edwards, Reverend Alden) - doing a really good job of making this book a link from all her previous travels to the settled domestic life - but changing social life - that lies ahead for her.

Also, I don't think I realized before how complete a story this is - it is the story of the Ingalls' final move and of the building of the new town of De Smet. There are so many "lasts" and "firsts" that occur in this book. I'm also kind of shocked at the changes that have *already* occurred in the land - the Native American population is gone, and many times it's mentioned that "the buffalo are gone" and that Laura will never see one in her lifetime; she sees the last buffalo wolf the winter before the town is settled, but in fact it has already left - just makes one lonely return journey with its mate to visit its old den before heading out west. The wild birds so abundant on Silver Lake during the Ingalls' first winter there don't settle on their way north in the spring because the new town site is so busy. It is all the last. As Pa talks about the tree claims that settlers are supposed to plant, Ma comments that the new trees will act as wind breaks, and Pa replies, "Likely they'll... change the climate, just as you say."

Laura Ingalls Wilder published this book in 1939, and imagines Pa speaking in 1880. Too bad some of us STILL can't get this concept into their heads.