Whenever I hear the name Laura Ingalls Wilder, or even just think it, a warm homey feeling comes over me like being covered in my grandma's quilt. 
Today I'm getting that feeling a lot, since February 7th is Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthday (born in 1867) and she is very much on my mind.
It's been said that Wilder wrote the Little House books to preserve the stories of her childhood for today's children, to help them to understand how much America had changed during her lifetime. Thanks to her foresight, generations of children have vicariously lived the pioneer experience and gained an appreciation of the difficulties the early homesteaders faced in a way that no history book or adult recitation of "how good we have it" could ever accomplish.
The Little House books have also given readers an opportunity to bond across generations, when the books are lovingly passed along from a parent or grandparent who fell in love with the series during their own childhood. Personally, I read my mother's set--which didn't include The First Four Years, discovered many years after Wilder's death--with their odd square shape and cloth covers, purchased during a time when the author was still alive (Wilder died in 1957 at the age of 90). I have warm memories of reading those old books, pretending I was living in the Ingalls cabin alongside Laura and Mary, and I can't wait to share the series with my own daughter. Reading even a fraction of the hundreds of customer reviews tells me that the Little House bond is shared by many, and one of the beautiful things about these books is that they are loved by boys and girls alike.
Wilder was 65 in 1932 when her first book, Little House in the Big Woods, was published and her books have remained in print ever since. In 1954 the American Library Association founded the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, the first one given to its namesake, and now awarded every two years to "an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children." The current winner is Tomie dePaola, who received the award in 2011. Besides the children's book award, there are museums, elementary schools (including one in my hometown), countless books, blogs, and websites--even a crater on Venus named for Laura Ingalls Wilder. And then, of course, there was the wildly popular television show that brought Laura, most notably in the form of Melissa Gilbert, into the homes of millions every week (along with Nellie Olesen, the quintessential mean girl). It's quite a legacy.
Please join me in some Little House nostalgia, as I reminisce about maple syrup candy and falling asleep to the sound of fiddle playing--what are some of your favorite Little House moments? --Seira
The nine books in the Little House series:
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Whenever I hear the name Laura Ingalls Wilder, or even just think it, a warm homey feeling comes over me like being covered in my grandma's quilt. Today I'm getting that feeling a lot, since February 7th is Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthday (born in 1867) and she is very much on my mind.
It's been said that Wilder wrote the Little House books to preserve the stories of her childhood for today's children, to help them to understand how much America had changed during her lifetime. Thanks to her foresight, generations of children have vicariously lived the pioneer experience and gained an appreciation of the difficulties the early homesteaders faced in a way that no history book or adult recitation of "how good we have it" could ever accomplish.
The Little House books have also given readers an opportunity to bond across generations, when the books are lovingly passed along from a parent or grandparent who fell in love with the series during their own childhood. Personally, I read my mother's set--which didn't include The First Four Years, discovered many years after Wilder's death--with their odd square shape and cloth covers, purchased during a time when the author was still alive (Wilder died in 1957 at the age of 90). I have warm memories of reading those old books, pretending I was living in the Ingalls cabin alongside Laura and Mary, and I can't wait to share the series with my own daughter. Reading even a fraction of the hundreds of customer reviews tells me that the Little House bond is shared by many, and one of the beautiful things about these books is that they are loved by boys and girls alike.
Wilder was 65 in 1932 when her first book, Little House in the Big Woods, was published and her books have remained in print ever since. In 1954 the American Library Association founded the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, the first one given to its namesake, and now awarded every two years to "an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children." The current winner is Tomie dePaola, who received the award in 2011. Besides the children's book award, there are museums, elementary schools (including one in my hometown), countless books, blogs, and websites--even a crater on Venus named for Laura Ingalls Wilder. And then, of course, there was the wildly popular television show that brought Laura, most notably in the form of Melissa Gilbert, into the homes of millions every week (along with Nellie Olesen, the quintessential mean girl). It's quite a legacy.
Please join me in some Little House nostalgia, as I reminisce about maple syrup candy and falling asleep to the sound of fiddle playing--what are some of your favorite Little House moments? --Seira
The nine books in the Little House series:
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By: webmaster,
on 11/27/2009
Blog: bookreporter.com (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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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.
