Little House on the Prairie
Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Illustrator: Garth Williams
Pages: 352
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Book Description:
Laura Ingalls and her family are heading to Kansas! Leaving behind their home in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, they travel by covered wagon until they find the perfect spot to build a little house on the prairie. Laura and her sister Mary love exploring the rolling hills around their new home, but the family must soon get to work, farming and hunting and gathering food for themselves and for their livestock. Just when the Ingalls family starts to settle into their new home, they find themselves caught in the middle of a conflict. Will they have to move again?
Review:
I read this book with my seven and eleven-year-old. There is so much adventure and simple joys of life in this whole series of books, and this one is well worth reading. While it doesn’t give any answers to the issue of white settlers taking over Indian land, I think it captures the struggle of it by looking through Laura’s child eyes. Also, while the book uses the phrase “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” it is never used in a way that Laura agrees with it. It’s always shown as something a grumpy adult says and her own parents disagree with. It is also reiterated that there are good Indians and bad Indians, just as there are good and bad people of every race.
But that is a side part of the story. A lot of the book is about the struggle of moving across the country in a covered wagon, building a house and farm from scratch, fighting the weather and nature, and the adventure of the pioneer life and spirit.
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