This book was cute but kind of read like an instructional guide for six year olds on how to survive in the Wisconsin winter, and i'm not sure where there's a market for instructional guides for six year olds on how to survive in the Wisconsin winter.

n

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n  Check Out the Written Review!n

You don't need magic to make a series magical.

Four-year-old Laura Ingalls Wilder lives with her Ma, Pa and sisters, Mary & Carrie, in a little house in the big woods of Wisconsin in 1871.

We follow a year in the life of Laura - from celebrating Christmas to the fall harvest.

The Ingalls family is always bustling about and preparing for the next season. There very survival depends on their cooperation.

In the winter, we watch them make maple sugar, in spring they plant the garden, the summer they play in the fields and fall they gather their ccrops.

From corn-husk dolls to pig roasts to sugaring-off parties - they are busy, busy, busy.

n  The barrels of salted fish were in the pantry, and yellow cheeses were stacked on the pantry shelves. n

Despite the tough circumstances, they always make it work with Ma's gentle guidance and Pa's happy fiddle.

She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

For a series written so long ago and geared towards young children, this holds so well.

All the little details make this story come alive.

Every time I go back to this story, I am just as enraptured and enthralled as I was when I was a little girl.

All activities seem so different from the commonplace childhood memories I have...and yet, I identified so closely with Laura when I was younger.

I couldn't have been the only kid wishing our attic was filled with preserves or wanting to roast a pig tail. I'll even admit, I wanted to kick around the ol' pig bladder just to see what it was like.

The love, and friendship, and happiness Laura experiences along with the harsh and hungry winters truly makes for a wonderful story.

The little tales from Pa brings this book to life and Ma's gentle nurturing firmly holds together the family. Every time I read this series, I think about my own family. And give my Ma and Pa a call.

n  But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods.n

Audiobook Comments
Narrated by Cherry Jones and accompanied on the fiddle by Paul Woodielv. Paul gave life to Pa's songs and Cherry truly made this audiobook a masterpiece. Loved every word of it.

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Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder is a story that tells of Laura’s early childhood and upbringing in Wisconsin during the 1870s. Readers learn how her family had to live and survive in a little log cabin during pioneer times.

In some ways life seems much simpler during this time period, but the hard work that was necessary to survive had to be arduous. Either you grew a garden and hunted or you didn’t eat. You chopped wood or didn’t have heat for the hard, frosty winters. There wasn’t much entertainment available or toys to play with. Children had daily chores that had to be done. Because Laura’s family are devout Christians, Sunday’s are reserved for church and Bible and nothing else. There were strict rules. I think young readers will be fascinated comparing what life was like then to how they live now.

This book was extremely thought-provoking to me. It conjured up thoughts from the past and present, making me think of the differences between my upbringing in the city compared to rural, country living now. When we moved over a decade ago I had visions of becoming a homesteader, until I was thrust into the harsh realities of raising animals for food. I learned really quick that I lacked something others around me didn’t: the capability to kill an animal that you nurtured and cared for. My first visit to the backyard butcher was like culture shock. That day my distant neighbor (who’s a homesteader) made the comment that my generation will never survive. Obviously when it comes down to survival, people will do what they have to, in contrast to our day and age now where it’s so convenient to just head to the supermarket and grab some meat that someone else processed, or produce someone else grew. In this book they’re hunting mainly wild deer, but they do have pigs that the children care for. The story gets quite graphic—sharing the preparation of the meat after hunting. Obviously I’m not a hunter either, but what if it came down to surviving and the need to feed my family without farmers? These are just some of the thoughts that came to mind when reading this with my children.

Overall, we enjoyed this story and have plans to finish the entire series. I always admire themes of family and kindness, and the love this family shares is something special. Times spent singing and listening to Pa’s fiddle by the fire were my favorites. The children do find ways to have fun during their chores which is nice. It’s such a cozy tale at times, written well with beautiful descriptions, and one we’ll likely revisit in the future.

If you’re reading this with children, I highly recommend the audio companion to the book by Cherry Jones. We used it along with the physical books. Cherry does a wonderful job with the audio and even sings along. It really brings the story to life.

4****

GARTH WILLIAMS
On the Banks of Plum Creek, (The Little House Series), original cover art

Sometimes it’s difficult to capture the real colour of a story, but not with this one. There were so many endearing moments I want to someday return to. The colour of kindness, maybe? Because, as I think, every reader cannot help but become kinder to every creature alive after experiencing this wonderful story.
The Christmas feel to the story there was - wintery scenes in here were like the festive postcards so beautifully depicted. And at the same time, when my eyes settled on the pages where the thawing and snow melting had begun, I thought that the real spring is outside - it's how vivid those descriptions were as if you could even go walking into all those green woods with wild flowers' clearings under endless blue sky with white clouds and brightly shining sun. Those have to be among the most green sceneries there are in the literature.



I loved to be immersed in a little child Laura's world - the way she thinks and feels, and experiences the outside world. Through her eyes I was able to see all around the place she lives in: endless woods in different shades of green, shimmering blue water and looking hazy blue hills; dearest to her heart people.

Pa's merry blue eyes and his fiddle singing was one of my favourite things in this book. Ma in her beautiful delaine dress, and when making a butter with a strawberry leaf pattern, and when slapping a bear! on the shoulder. Mother deer and her fawn, a pretty little thing with big dark eyes. The maple woods. Laura getting the most beautiful doll on Christmas day; having a quibble with her namesake about whose baby sibling is the prettiest; pebbles and the pocket :)

"It smelled good. The whole house smelled good, with the sweet and spicy smells from the kitchen, the smell of the hickory logs burning with clear, bright flames in the fireplace, and the smell of a clove-apple beside Grandma's mending basket on the table. The sunshine came in through the sparkling window panes, and everything was large and spacious and clean."

n  "She thought to herself, “This is now.” She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now.
They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago."n



n  19 November '22n
"Nothing but woods, more and more trees... "
What a lovely beginning to the story I've been meaning to read for a while. Digital books might sometimes definitely be elusive, like something in the air that not easily can be reached... Thank you, Darla, so much for inspiring me to finally pick this series up! I remember that it was the cover of the forth book that caught my eye and the one I wanted to read, but didn't feel like reading at that particular moment the first three books prior to On the Banks of Plum Creek :)

"Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.
The great, dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods." <3

The first installment in the Little House series is, hands down, my favorite. Unlike later books, this window into a young Laura's first home—where for the only time in her life she's surrounded by extended family, their cultures, and their heritage—stands in contrast to the transience that marks her well into adulthood. Little House in the Big Woods takes comfort in housekeeping's simple pleasures, Pa's chilling stories told before a crackling fire in a snug log cabin, and family communion. The affection evident in Laura's recollection necessarily implies loss when the reality of pioneering and the finality of trans-continental travel close this chapter of her life forever.

*** UPDATE, 2018 ***
i just listened to the audiobook version narrated by Cherry Jones, and she does a lovely job. top marks to her.

also, this time through, i was much more aware of the actual history of the Ingalls family and the reality of Charles Ingalls's failure as a provider. this means that every time he sweetly explained away to young laura and mary why he'd failed to bring game home ("i just couldn't shoot the doe; it was so beautiful") or why the family needed to bravely and sweetly endure some other small privation i kept wondering whether he was maybe actually just routinely incompetent and laura was just too starry-eyed—or perhaps protective of her father's legacy—to be honest about it.

also, recently while reading a critique of the Little House series, i was shocked to realize that Ma did indeed have a pretty ugly attitude about native americans. (this had been fairly unremarkable or invisible to me as a child reader.) but i didn't catch anything explicitly ugly in this particular installment in the series—though, full disclosure, i listened to this narration occasionally distracted, while puttering about the house. maybe we don't see the xenophobia 'til Little House on the Prairie, when she freaks out that her pies left cooling in the cabin window are stolen?

My mom read this series to me when I was young, and I've held a soft spot for them ever since. So, it was wonderful to read them again as an adult and find Laura Ingalls Wilder's writing just as intriguing, captivating, fascinating and beautifully sweet!

Laura is only about three years old here, and the story centers around one year in her life. In addition to Laura there is her older sister Mary, and Ma, Pa, and Baby Carrie.

The first thing that struck me upon rereading this was how "slow" it initially seemed. Compared to all the middle-grade action/adventure books I typically read and love, here, all we really talked about was food and food preparation. And yet, after a few pages I realized I was somehow completely sucked in and really wanted to know just how things were done then. In chapters that follow things get more exciting - there are bear encounters, trips to town (can you imagine having never seen a town, never having seen even two houses together before?), cougars, bee attacks, harvests and even a dance at Grandma and Grandpa's where everyone gets dressed in their finest!

I was also amazed at how many things had stayed with me from just one reading years and years ago! Vivid images and recollections of scenes that obviously intrigued me to know end - and, frankly, still do! (The maple sugar sweets, for one!)

Laura Ingalls Wilder never uses a big vocabulary, so her books can appeal to a huge age range! And even with the limited vocabulary, she's somehow always so descriptive and you get a real sense for how each character feels and what they believe. This, in combination with the wonderful illustrations by Garth Williams is like a very clear window into life in the Big Woods.

After the first few chapters, once I got into the flow of the story, I found myself wanting to constantly pick up the book and read the next chapter. There are so many fantastic stories, too, and there are wonderful messages on practically each page. The messages are never heavy hitting, but they are there simply in the way the story unfolds. Everything from self-reliance, responsibility, hard work, sharing, caring, listening, truthfulness, progress, respect, even environmentalism! It sounds all quite boring laid out like this, but these characteristics are woven into exciting stories in Laura's life or tales her Pa tells her of him as a boy or family.

It's very clear how much Laura loves her family, and the insights she brings to the book - to life - are incredible and touching!

I love this book so much it's hard for me to write a good review of it, but I hope you'll pick it up, give it a few chapters to adjust to the pace, and then become just as captivated as I was - and fall just as much in love.

An interesting interpretation of what life was like in 1871. There is discussion of what life was like with absolutely no technology. This is a book children would definitely warm to more than an adult, in my opinion.

This book taught me everything I know about churning butter, making cheese, slaughtering pigs, tapping maples for syrup, and catching fish. It makes me hungry every time I read it.

Deeply comforting to me from Laura spying the winter wolf on the frontier out the cabin window at the beginning to Auld Lang Syne at the end. It is romanticized and nostalgic, yet includes vivid descriptions of a subsistence life in a cabin in the woods - primal moments like finding a tree full of honey or seeing a town for the first time that could belong to any culture.

For those of us armed with the foreknowledge of the later trials faced by Laura and her family we have to wonder, "Charles, Charles, what madness made you leave." Always chasing that American phantom of wealth and "free" land.
I'm rereading all of these after starting Ducks, Newburyport, whose narrator always has Laura on her mind.

I will add that I find the writing spare and beautiful. How much of this is Laura and how much is the editing of Laura's daughter Rose I will leave to others.

And the Garth Williams illustrations are wonderful.

I have such fond memories of the love I had for Laura, but reading it as a 36-year-old woman feels like I may have outgrown it.

I still find value in this book, but some of the language and dialogue was painful to read this time around. Perhaps I can share this one with my 10-year-old son instead and come back to this series through his shared eyes.

3 Stars for me. But still something everyone should read as child.

I started rereading this series because of John Scieszka's bizarre hatred of Little House on the Prairie. In attempting the perfectly noble task of getting young boys to read more, Scieszka has continuously heaped scorn on that book, banishing it to the girl ghetto of the Sweet Valley High and American Girls series. Putting aside the unfair comparison to syndicate titles published for purely commercial reasons, his assesment of Little House as a book purely for girls is infuriating.

For one thing, gender-segregated reading rubs me the wrong way. For another thing, these books contain aspects that any child might enjoy. There's farming, hunting, construction, cooking, locust plagues, wolf packs, riots, blizzards, tragedy, hope, family, hard work, preserverance, horses, dogs, railroads, envy, loss, and triumph. Ignore the sugary-sweet, insipid television series - these books are genuine and engaging.

3.5 stars

I was pretty young when I first read this; about 7, I think. I found it kind of slow then but not bad. I just re-read it on audio, which is cool because it comes with a violin playing the actual melodies of the songs Laura remembers.

The point of the book is to show what life was like back when . . .” So a lot of it isn’t a real story but descriptions of cooking, cleaning, traveling, bullet making, hunting, etc. It is a lyrical prose that really brings the setting to life.

This is the only book that has extended family in it, if I remember right. (I think they are mostly Ma’s family.) It includes a few stories of Pa and Grandpa as young boys. I don’t agree with all the parenting decisions in these books, but that cousin Charley really needed a good whipping. He totally deserved what he got when karma came for him.

In real life, Laura is about 4 years old here, but the publisher made her 6 because they didn’t believe someone could remember being that age.