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"Laura always wondered why bread made of corn-meal was called johnny-cake. It wasn't cake."  - Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder

Shortly after beginning to read chapter books independently, my mother suggested I read the first of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, Little House in the Big Woods. It was the summer I turned seven and I tore through the series (with breaks in between some of the books to read various books in the Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume canons) with fervor until I finished the last book during Christmas vacation six months later. I have particularly fond memories of reading The Long Winter during an overnight stay at my grandfather's house. I always, always knew that I would read these books with my kids. One of my first thoughts upon learning my first child would be a boy--I am not kidding--was that there went my dreams of being able to bond over the Little House books. Then I heard--from teachers and other parents--that their boys loved these books. And my visions of reading them with my children were restored.

My boys and I began reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series last summer, when I thought they were both old enough to appreciate Little House in the Big Woods as a read aloud. They didn't just love it; they clamored for more. Good thing Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote eight more books in the series. (Though I tend to dismiss the last book, The First Four Years, on the grounds that it is disturbing and has a different tone from the rest of the series. A fact I picked up on even at the age of seven, though a recent New Yorker article shed some additional light onto this topic.)

We are now in the middle of On the Banks of Plum Creek, my favorite of the Little House books. To me, this book has more action and character development than Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie (the first two titles we read), which are heavy on the long descriptive passages. It is in this book that the individual personalities of Laura and her sister Mary become more defined--Mary as the gentle, obedient daughter and Laura as the spitfire tomboy (my older son always gets upset when Laura does something wrong and gets scolded by Pa)--and we see them in the world around them instead of just at home. Who can forget that house in the ground, or mean Nellie Oleson and her town party, or the locusts, or--most disturbing to my seven-year old mind--Laura losing her beloved rag doll, Charlotte? Oh, there is action and plenty to love in the earlier books: the image of Laura and Mary playing with a pic's bladder balloon in Little House in the Big Woods is forever burned into my brain because it just seemed so weird to me the first time I read it. And my boys don't tire of hearing about Pa and his hunting escapades, or the way they built their homes, or the various animals the the Ingalls family kept as pets and working farm animals.

Food figures prominently in Wilder's descriptions of the (often harsh) pioneer life. So much so, in fact, that Barbara M. Walker collected many of the foods mentioned throughout the course of the series in The Little House Cookbook. It is in this book that we found the recipe for johnny-cake, a bread that was a staple in Laura's childhood home. Walker describes it as, "a crusty slab of cooked cornmeal that was mostly a vehicle for syrup or gravy." The name "johnny-cake" comes from New England pronunciation of "journey cake"--a staple of colonial travelers.

Johnny-cake (adapted from The Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker)

Oftentimes, as adults, we revisit the books we've read as children and come away with an entirely new understanding of old, familiar stories. Gretchen Rubin, author of THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, recalls such an experience with the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.


My favorite memory of receiving a book as a gift dates back to the Christmas when I’d just turned six years old. My beautiful LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS was inscribed: “Merry Christmas to Gretchen, with all our love --- with the hope that you’ll love the stories about Laura and her family as much as your Mommy loved them.”

I loved this book beyond anything I’d ever read before.

I wasn’t quite able yet to read it comfortably myself, so my father would read me two chapters each night before I went to bed. I could read well enough to know when he skipped, however, and I remember taking great pleasure in scolding him when he didn’t read every word (a game that I’m now quite familiar with as the parent doing the reading!).

Every year, for the next seven years, I unwrapped the next book in the series. I couldn’t wait to read them, of course, and I’d raced through the whole series by the time I had my own set, but each year I looked forward to getting my fresh new volume.

I’ve re-visited those books as an adult, too, many times; few novels withstand multiple re-readings as well as the Little House books.

Have you read those books? Do you remember the ending of LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS? I didn’t understand it when I was six years old, but now I do:

She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth…She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, “This is now.”

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.

-- Gretchen Rubin


Check back later today as Suzan Colón describes the personal significance of Johanna Spyri's HEIDI.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I've decided to devote some of my reading time to re-reading some classic books that I loved as a child and to reading some books that I've always wanted to read. For example, did you know that I've never read a Lemony Snicket book? The horror!

Well, the Little House series is a series that I did read and LOVE as a child, and I was also an avid fan of the TV show. It's been so long since I've read the books that I wanted to start my "classics re-reading adventure" with this series.


Little House in the Big Woods is the first book in the series and told from the third-person limited point of view of five-year old Laura Ingalls. Laura and her family, Ma, Pa, Mary, and baby Carrie, characters who were near and dear to my heart growing up, live in a long cabin on the edge of a Wisconsin forest. The pioneer life is a hard one, and the days are full of difficult and time-consuming chores. However, there is always time at the end of the day for Pa to play his fiddle and to tell Laura and Mary lots of stories, like the time he mistook a tree stump for a bear. However hard the day, it's quickly apparent that what's lacking in luxury is made up in love.

As soon as I picked up the book and started reading, I immediately got the "warm fuzzies," as memories of Laura came flooding back. Believe it or not, I was delighted that I had forgotten so many details of the books, and it really felt like I was reading them for the first time. I was especially interested in Laura's accounts of killing the pig and curing the meat, churning butter, the maple syrup and cheese-making processes, and more descriptions of how pioneers lived and made things.

There were, however, some instances in the book where I thought the details were sparse and didn't provide a clear picture of what was going on. For example, when Ma and Laura encounter the bear outside the barn, I just couldn't figure out where the bear was standing, even after reading the passage over a few times. Or in the cheese-making process, I couldn't understand exactly WHY the rennet from the calf was so crucial to making cheese. Granted, we are getting an account from a five-year old girl's point of view, but other stories are filled with details.

That aside, I do think that this book will appeal to many young children, especially girls, even after all these years. It really is a wholesome, down-to-earth book about love, family, hard work, and a time long ago. I also think it would make a great read aloud for the entire family, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the series and watching Laura grow.

What about you? Were you a Little House fan?




More info:

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: HarperFestival (October 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060797509
• ISBN-13: 978-0060797508
• Source of book: Library