By the Shores of Silver Lake picks up about 4 or 5 years after On the Banks of Plum Creek ends. By now Laura is 13 and after the family all get scarlet fever Mary is left blind and there is a new baby sibling, Grace. So, Laura has to step up into more of a helper role in the family. Once again the family is about to move further west into Dakota Territory. Pa has the opportunity to work in a store for a railroad town and that can help them financially get ahead. Plus, the government is giving away 160 acre homesteads if the family can work and improve it for 5 years. So, the family moves first to a railroad town where they spend the winter, then on to De Smet where they stake a claim and start building a home there.

This has been my least favorite re-read in the series so far. A lot of the story takes place in the railroad town and there is a lot less beauty and wilderness scenery and descriptions. You also see a LOT more expected of Laura. I know that would be true to the time period, but it still makes me sad to see 13-year-old Laura have to work like an adult and start to lose her childhood freedom. Jack also dies (although very conveniently) and that's pretty sad as he is such a part of the earlier books. Overall, I just didn't enjoy this one as much.

Some quotes I liked:

[After Jack's death] "Jack was not standing beside Laura to watch Pa go. There was only emptiness to turn to instead of Jack's eyes looking up to say that he was there to take care of her. Laura knew then that she was not a little girl anymore. Now she was alone; she must take care of herself. When you must do that, then you do it and you are grown up." (p. 13)

"On that dreadful morning when Mary could not see even sunshine full in her eyes, Pa had said that Laura must see for her. He had said, 'Your two eyes are quick enough, and your tongue, if you will use them for Mary.' And Laura had promised. So she tried to be eyes for Mary, and it was seldom that Mary need ask her, 'See out loud for me, Laura, please.'" (p. 22-23)

"Then Pa looked straight at Laura and said, 'You girls keep away from the [railroad] camp. When you go walking, don't go near where the men are working, and you be sure you're back here before they come in for the night. There's all kinds of rough men working on the grade and using rough language, and the less you see and hear of them the better. Now remember, Laura. And you too Carrie.' Pa's face was very serious. 'Yes, Pa,' Laura promised, and Carrie almost whispered, 'Yes, Pa.' Carrie's eyes were large and frightened. She did not want to hear rough language, whatever rough language might be. Laura would have liked to hear some, just once, but of course she must obey Pa." (p. 76)

[The most racist part in this book] "'I always heard you can't trust a half-breed,' Ma said. Ma did not like Indians; she did not like even half-Indians. 'We'd all have been scalped down on the Verdigris River, if it hadn't been for a full-blood,' said Pa. 'We wouldn't have been in any danger of scalping if it hadn't been for those howling savages,' said Ma, 'with fresh skunk skins around their middles.' And she made a sound that came from remembering how those skunk skins smelled." (p. 82)

"'Another thing, Laura,' said Pa. 'You know Ma was a teacher, and her mother before her. Ma's heart is set on one of you girls teaching school, and I guess it will have to be you. So you see you must have your schooling.' Laura's heart jerked, and then she seemed to feel it falling, far, far down. She did not say anything. She knew that Pa and Ma, and Mary too, had thought that Mary would be a teacher. Now Mary couldn't teach, and - 'Oh, I won't! I won't!' Laura thought. 'I don't want to! I can't.' Then she said to herself, 'You must.' She could not disappoint Ma. She must do as Pa said. So she had to be a school teacher when she grew up. Besides, there was nothing else she could do to earn money." (p. 127)

- everyone cries at Jack the dog dying (i still did) but the buffalo wolves leaving the prairie that would become De Smet, South Dakota hit different this time (p.s. had to find out if buffalo wolves ended up going the way of the dodo and they didn't!!)
- loved Laura describing everything to Mary, specifically them riding the train for the first time
- Laura describing Big Jerry riding his pony into the sun setting along the horizon, saying "they rode right into the sun. they'll go on in the sun around the world!" (a fellow romantic) then Mary going "Laura, you know he couldn't ride into the sun, he's just riding along on the ground like anybody" is one of the worst people in the world (petty reasons only)
- not only does Ma's incredible racism strike again, she forces Laura to play schoolteacher to Carrie's playmates which drives them aWAY
- way more songs and fiddle-playing than i remember, kind of drags the middle

LIW was a runner up for the Newbery Medal five times in a row, but never won it. Plum Creek and each subsequent book were Honor Books. The year Little House on the Prairie was published a book called Dobry won the medal and LHotP wasn't recognized at all. Isn't it funny what lasts?

Little House on the Prairie is such an empty, echoing book, that Plum Creek feels like a metropolis, and Silver Lake just bursts with people. It's really only a few dozen, but the contrast always strikes me. Silver Lake feels like a transition book for lots of reasons. It starts off in such a bleak place: Pa has only been able to make two poor wheat crops since the grasshoppers left. Everyone has been sick. Mary is blind. (There's also this new baby. Where did she come from? Kinda poor planning there, Pa.) Jack is old and tired and depressed. There's no food in the house for company. In Plum Creek, Laura is spunky and fierce. The Laura in Silver Lake wouldn't sic a crawdad on Nellie Oleson. She has too much work to do and is too busy doing it.

There's also the railroad which feels kind of shocking. One always imagines history in a more linear way with one period coming to a full stop before the next begins. Instead, the Ingalls take the train west and then finish the trip in their covered wagon.

And then there's Laura's father. Someone needs to write a biography of Charles Ingalls. I'm getting more and more intrigued by him. In the first couple of books he's Pa, Saint of the Sod. In Silver Lake, he's a little grittier. When he gets a job offer, he bails as quick as he can, leaving his wife to get four children out on the train to meet up with him. He consorts with men who swear and drink and steal horses. He positively carouses.

This is also the book where the politics get real interesting. Rose Wilder Lane was such a rabid libertarian that she said she prayed for the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt and thought about doing it herself. Given her significant role in editing these books, I tend to attribute the various speeches about Liberty and Independence to her. But it's in Silver Lake that Pa whips out a chorus from "Uncle Sam's Farm" -- "Then come along, come along, make no delay; / Come from every nation, come from every way. / Our lands, they are broad enough - don't be alarmed, / For Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm." The Homestead Act gave away 1.6 million homesteads, about 420,000 miles of federal land. And there are those freedom loving, don't take anything from the government or anyone else Ingalls right in the middle of it. The myth of the American pioneer is a complicated one.

Laura is forced to grow up due to circumstance but she still makes time for fun and frolicking. I feel like this is when the series really begins.

I will be rereading and will do a review then.

Endlich passiert mal nicht nur schlimmes

I remember that the shift in tone and the time gap between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake was a jarring one, even when I read these as a kid. It was even more surprising on this read. It makes sense, though--Wilder hops over a dark time in the family's life during which they moved to Iowa, had a new baby brother, and lost him all within a short span of time. Laura is a child at the end of Plum Creek, but she's almost a grown-up at the beginning of Silver Lake. Not going to lie, my husband and I both teared up when  Jack dies and we learn that Mary has gone blind--and that's just the first chapter! Laura deals with a lot of adult problems in this book, and the happy-go-lucky tone of the first books doesn't really return again in the series, except maybe for a brief spell in These Happy Golden Years. That doesn't make the later books any less brilliant, and I love each one fiercely.

Yet another re-read from years ago when I was younger, but this book fell a little flat for me. Laura's "seeing with words" for Mary got rather annoying, as did her bemoaning doing her duty and becoming a teacher. I liked the descriptions of how the railroad and town got built, and the emotion that seeped through at each new problem to be solved. I liked the surprise at the end, with Almanzo and was eager to know why he had come west with Royal. All things considered, an interesting look at the time period, but a very dry look as well.

I’m rereading these for the first time since I was a child inspired by Gretchen Rubin’s comment in Happier At Home about how Laura Ingalls Wilder is so adept at describing the concept and atmosphere of “home”. She’s so right. I’m sure I totally identified with Laura and Mary as a child but rereading them as an adult, I cannot stop putting myself in Ma’s place, constantly moving and having to establish a new home from scratch. I can read between the lines as an adult and understand that Ma was not thrilled to not be settled, be annoyed at Pa for his restlessness (while still appreciating his persistence in providing for his family) and be impressed at the closeness of the family and how they always manage to build a home where contentment and unselfishness reign.

It was toward the beginning of this novel that I abandoned the Little House books at age eleven, and to a large degree, I blame the television series. The book opens with the news of Mary’s blindness, which was shown with typical pioneer stoicism: “She was able to sit up now, wrapped in quilts in Ma’s old hickory rocking chair. All that long time, week after week, when she could still see a little, but less every day, she had never cried. Now she could not even see the brightest light anymore. She was still patient and brave.”

Compare that to the TV series, in which Mary just woke up one day completely sightless and screaming, “Pa! I can’t see! I’m blind!” The actress was nominated for an Emmy for that performance, but it was nothing like the book.

Another discrepancy came in the chapter “Grown Up” in which Jack, the family dog, dies. Twelve-year-old Laura realizes that just as she has put her old rag doll Charlotte away, she’s too old to run around playing with a dog along the prairie. She’s got responsibilities now. Among them is being Mary’s “eyes,” which she does by describing aloud to Mary everything she sees. No doubt that is part of what shaped her into a writer.

In the TV show, Jack is simply replaced by another dog, Bandit, who gets his name because he is caught stealing bacon and because he has a black “mask” around his eyes. He won’t stop following Laura around, and she, grieving over Jack, doesn’t accept him as hers until the end of the episode. I guess Michael Landon didn’t think the viewing public wanted Laura to grow up just yet.

These things I was able to reconcile. There were the books, and there was the TV show, and they didn’t always match. What bothered me much more was a minor detail: Laura’s first ride on horseback didn’t occur until this book. The Laura on the TV show was an expert rider at a young age, and some of my favorite episodes revolved around her riding. I wasn’t willing to let go of those images and the feelings they gave me, even if the book clearly showed they were inaccurate.

But even that was not enough to turn me off to the books. What I think happened was that I reached a dull part (the books do have them, as do the works of many other great writers), and I wasn’t willing to push myself through as I had with n  The Long Wintern years before. I’d grown lazy, spoiled by the minute-to-minute entertainment of television.

I finally finished By the Shores of Silver Lake two Shabbosim ago, and I loved it. But once again, I don’t think I had enough understanding of the history to have appreciated it back in fifth grade. I remember quite clearly that I listed “homestead” as a vocabulary word from the book, and I remember noticing I had no others, from which I concluded that the Little House books were getting easy for me. But when I looked up “homestead” in the dictionary, I didn’t learn anything about the Homestead Act, which is what the whole book is about. Any social studies teachers who want their students to understand the settlement of the American west ought to give them the chapters called “The Spring Rush,” “Pa’s Bet,” and “Building Boom.” These bring the concept of manifest destiny to life. So while the Little House books aren’t necessarily vocabulary builders for older readers, they’re most definitely a slice of history, and that goes for all ages.

This is a series I read so much in childhood, and at least once as an adult, that I really didn't think it had anything more to offer me, but after reading Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, Laura's unpolished, first draft, autobiography, I felt an itch to pick up the Little House Books again. But not the first one; I wanted to start here, where it seems like the books really start to build on each other in a way they don't earlier in the series. This one, I've realized, is where the series starts to become young adult rather than juvenile, much the way the Betsy-Tacy series enters a distinct new phase with Heaven to Betsy. Picking up By the Shores of Silver Lake, I read the first few paragraphs. I read this:

"Her blue eyes were still beautiful, but they did not know what was before them, and Mary herself could never look through them again to tell Laura what she was thinking without saying a word."

Yeah, this still has something to offer, familiar or not, it's just so good.

This book told the story of the Ingalls family helping form a brand new town and the process of claiming their homestead. I’ve learned a lot from these books about what life was like during the early days of the United States and am beginning to get very interested in them.