Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder

No surprise, but this book is excellent. As with Little House In the Big Woods, I am just amazed by what people could do with thier bare hands and a little wit in those days. Pa building a house almost single handedly has got to be the most amazing feat.

Also as with Big Woods, there is a lot more going on in this book than I ever picked up when I read these at age 7. The relationship the family has with the Natives is very interesting. Ma and some of the neighbors view them as beneath respect. But Pa has a deep respect for them, while at the same time feeling the need to protect his family.

I also thought a lot this time about how lonely it must have been to be in the middle of the wide flat prairie, your nearest neighbor miles away. But also how close this would have made you be to your family. I grew up at times in locations far from town, and it is a very healthy, but often lonesome, experience.

Finally, Pa and Ma moved to the Prairie because the Big Woods were getting crowded. I wonder what they would have thought of the development I live in, with houses 10 feet apart?

Little House in the Big Woods - Laura Ingalls Wilder

I read this to my daughters Emma and Avery for our nightly reading. I’d recommend reading this book even as an adult. It was very easy reading, you could finish it in two sittings I bet. There is a lot going on there that is going to go over the kids heads, in terms of the history: cultural things like sexual politics of the time; finding out that there was pop culture even back then in the back woods (Pa busting out his fiddle to play the hits of the day); and that Pa has a spirit of conservation even as he is a hunter and farmer; thinking about how it must have been to live so isolated, but with everything you need at your disposal if you work hard enough– thinking about how America is such a land of bounty with so many great natural resources.

The pioneers (and the Native Americans before them) must have felt like they’d stumbled on the garden of Eden (although of course there was plenty of hardship). So much game and fertile soil and timber and open land. I think Americaowes as much of its greatness to this awesome tract of land we started on as it does to its ideals and visionary system of government. But also Pa and Ma worked their asses off which is also a great American value.