The sugaring off dance at Grandma’s in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. The Indian War Cry on the prairies of Kansas Territory. The grasshopper plague on the banks of Plum Creek in Minnesota. When Laura Ingalls Wilder began to write down her recollections of a 19th century childhood, she little suspected that her collected stories would come to vie for pride of place as the greatest American novel. Literary critics may argue over whether to back Huck Finn, Scarlett O’Hara, Captain Ahab or the Joads; I would assert that the America of yesteryear was never seen through clearer eyes than those of a little girl named Laura who followed her remarkable father on a uniquely American journey that took the family from a hunter’s existence in the forest, to homesteading on the prairies to a settling down of life in a small town.
Ostensibly written for children, the 9 books in the Little House series offer an educational, rewarding and memorable read for people of all ages, and should be of particular interest to all modern families who are working towards sustainability. Though admittedly romanticized to some degree in contrast to the real events in the author’s life, the attention given to how the Ingalls and Wilder families grew food, built homes, made furniture, cooked, crafted basic essentials and built lives for themselves, provides a stunningly valuable record of the skills of our forebears that so many of us are working to regain in the 21st century.
Though the Little House books have been delighting children for some 80 years, there is nothing dumbed-down or patronizing about them, unlike so much of modern juvenile fiction. In fact, it is their true-to-life quality, their honesty and naturalness that is doubtless responsible for the enduring loyalty adult readers feel for this series. My father so loves the Little House books that he read them to me as soon as I was old enough to pay attention, and as a little girl, I formed what would become a lifelong feeling of kinship with Laura Ingalls and her family. Listening to my father’s deep, quiet voice, I was transported to campfires under the stars, feeling safe despite the howls of wolves because of little dog Jack and the music of Pa’s fiddle. A part of me grew up within this world borrowed from the pages of books and this has absolutely influenced my adult outlook on the country in which I live and the way I want to live my life. In this article, I will summarize the 9 Little House books. If, like me, you have read this series too many times to count, I hope you will enjoy my comments on the respective books and will celebrate the marvelous stories with me. If you’ve never read them, may this be your guide to a wonderful new experience that just may change your own life in an important way.
Little House In The Big Woods (1932)
Synopsis:
Little Laura Ingalls and her older sister, Mary, live through a calendar year helping Ma and Pa with the chores of daily life in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. Pa is a hunter, trapper and farmer and the days of the year are filled with preserving meat, making cheese and butter, and filling the wonderful attic with vegetables and herbs so that the family can withstand winter time. Laura struggles with the rigidly imposed quiet of Sundays but makes the most of play time, having games under the two trees in front of her little log home, cherishing her corn cob doll and listening to Pa’s wonderful fiddle songs and stories. This book includes some of the Ingalls’ classic family stories that the author so wanted to share, including ‘Grandpa and the Pig’, and ‘The Voice in the Woods’. The sugaring off dance in the maple woods at Laura’s grandparents’ home is one of the most memorable portions of the book, as is the humble but joyful celebration of Christmas. Warmth and comfort radiate throughout Little House In The Big Woods, forming a lasting impression in the reader’s mind of the rewards of hard work and ingenuity.
Interesting Notes About Little House In The Big Woods
The ‘Big Woods’ in which Laura Ingalls Wilder lived are, sadly, much diminished since the author’s childhood, though some of the trees remain in this area that includes part of both Wisconsin and Minnesota. Television portrayals of this portion of Ingalls Wilder’s life have given the mistaken impression that these woods were a conifer forest when, in fact, they were a mixed deciduous forest of oak, maple, ash and other trees. You can still visit Lake Pepin – the pretty body of water the family journeys to in order to do some shopping at the town of Pepin. During the author’s time, this area was still full of wildlife, enabling settlers to live by hunting, but this part of the country was quickly filling up and the fact that a threshing machine comes at harvest time to process Pa’s wheat is a very interesting commentary on how the country was changing and moving slowly but surely towards greater industrialization. Readers will doubtless remember (possibly with some horror) the butchering of the pig and the children playing balloon with the pig’s bladder, but it is precisely this type of factual detail that sets a book like Little House in the Big Woods apart from the more common, utterly sterilized forms of juvenile fiction. By reading this book, we learn real things about what went into supporting a family in the 1870s and exactly how people worked at survival. I consider Little House in the Big Woods to be the sweetest volume in the series.
Farmer Boy (1933)
Synopsis:
Almanzo Wilder (who would one day become Laura Ingalls’ husband) is an immensely likable little boy growing up on a prosperous farm in New York State. But prosperity is presented as the fruit of almost unceasing labor, whether Almanzo and his siblings are helping to plant and harvest crops, tend farm animals, make candles, weave cloth, or fill the icehouse. Almanzo would much rather work on the farm than go to school and the thing dearest to his boyish heart is horses. He dreams of one day earning his father’s trust to work with the ponies but this goal seems always just out of reach. Some of the most memorable parts of Farmer Boy include the Wilder children’s extremely funny attempts to govern themselves while their parents are away, ending with Almanzo throwing stove blacking at his mother’s beautiful parlor wall, and the episode of the strange stray dog that comes to protect the family while they have a great deal of money in the house and thieves are rumored to be in the neighborhood. As with all of the ‘Little House’ books, Farmer Boy provides incredibly detailed descriptions of skilled work – everything from making a pair of shoes to building a sled – but the lasting impression most readers will come away from this charming book with is of food! Almanzo eats his way from cover to cover of Farmer Boy and all readers are hereby warned not to attempt reading this book without a hearty snack at hand.
Interesting Notes About Farmer Boy
Biographers have suggested that Farmer Boy represented Laura Ingalls Wilder’s chance to fantasize about the abundant food supply her husband had enjoyed when he was a boy but which was so illusive in her own childhood. The robust descriptions of doughnuts, pies, pancakes, platters heaped with mashed potatoes and squash, bowls of jelly, platters of meats do read almost like dream scenes and it could well be that the author dined vicariously through the pages of this rich and lovely book.
The farm depicted by Ingalls Wilder is a model of efficiency and prosperity and in reading this book as an adult, I was struck by exactly how much money Mother and Father Wilder were making from their efforts. For example, their potato harvest brings in $500 and the mother’s butter fetches top prices when she sells it. This is a tremendous contrast to the fortunes of the Ingalls family in which Pa has barely enough cash to purchase salt pork and cornmeal for most of his life. Yet again, exceptional detail is given about the specifics of seasonal tasks, including planting instructions for various crops and a harrowing account of attempting to save the harvest from frost. Of all the Little House books, Farmer Boy may be of greatest value to modern homesteaders who, a century-and-a-half later, are working today to try to achieve some of the success that the Wilder family achieved in doing nearly everything for themselves.
Little House On the Prairie (1935)
Synopsis:
Pa fears he can no longer support his family as a hunter in the Big Woods of Wisconsin as they become increasingly settled. The little house is sold and the Ingalls family sets out on their memorable covered wagon journey to the prairies of Indian Territory. Laura and Mary and Baby Carrie take delight in a whole new world of wildflowers, gophers, jackrabbits and wild birds, but it is Pa who is truly the central figure of Little House on the Prairie. This book’s loving portrayal of Charles Ingalls as an incredibly skilled pioneer is remarkable. He builds the log cabin and its furniture, digs a well, hunts and traps to support his family, plows and plants and is constantly teaching his little daughters valuable lessons about man’s work within the natural world. His harrowing encounters with a pack of wolves and a panther in the night are unforgettable. Haunting and vivid, too, is the description of the family’s near death from fever and ague, alone out there on the prairie. But, to me, the most poignant feature of this classic work is found in the tension between the young pioneer family and the Native Americans who had called the disputed lands of ‘Indian Territory’ home since time beyond recall.
As a child, I found parts of this book to be genuinely frightening, but as an adult, I have come to think of Little House On The Prairie as being possibly the best book of the series, once I grew to understand what the historic situation was surrounding the heartbreaking loss of Indigenous lands and the struggle of white settlers to then survive on these lands that were stolen so immorally from the Indians. Ingalls Wilder’s writing in this book is absolutely beautiful and her descriptions of the big, endless prairie paint mental pictures with exquisite skill, but Pa’s eventual loss of his little house in this territory is the part of this book that will stick with adult readers as something to understand and weigh with a clear comprehension of the bigger picture. If I were to vote one book in the series as ‘The Great American Novel’, this would be it.
Interesting Notes About Little House On The Prairie
Of geographic interest, researchers have confidently established that Pa’s little house was located in Rutland Township, Montgomery County, Kansas on a parcel of land where the hand dug well can still be seen. On an ethical note, adults reading this book to children would do well to explain its historic context. Like Gone With The Wind, Little House on the Prairie contains racist language and attitudes that are offensive to modern people, but utterly accurate to their times. I would urge parents and teachers to explain how the Indigenous peoples were decimated by disease and then betrayed and robbed by the American government and that the opening up of the lands the Ingalls family moved into in Indian Territory was the result of treaties that were repeatedly made and broken with the Indians. Ma’s fear of the Indians is firmly rooted in the white experience of massacres that took place in the mid 1800′s, but Pa and Laura’s admiration for some of the Indians, particularly the Osage tribe, is a positive talking point to bring up with young readers who must learn to view Native Americans with respect and empathy. I think it is especially important when reading non-Native accounts of this part of history to balance what is read by exploring the other side of the coin. I would recommend that the Ingalls family’s experience as a poor white family struggling to survive by any means they could, be juxtapositioned with Indian stories of what this part of their history was like for them, such as are presented in the TV documentary, How The West Was Lost.
On The Banks Of Plum Creek (1937)
Synopsis:
After having to leave their home on the Kansas prairie, the Ingalls family re-settles along Plum Creek in Minnesota in a dugout house set into the creek bank, close enough to the town of Walnut Grove for Mary and Laura to begin attending school. There they meet snippy Nellie Oleson who laughs at them for being country girls but who gets her comeuppance when Laura introduces her to the ‘old crab’ and the bloodsuckers in the creek. Pa borrows against his coming wheat crop and builds a beautiful little house for the family with real glass windows and a cook stove for Ma, but terrible misfortune befalls the Ingalls when a plague of grasshoppers descends from the sky and eats the land bare of every living green thing. Pa must walk 100 miles east to find work to keep the family going, and Ma and the girls are left alone to cope with drought and fire in the bare, lonely land. Despite the hardships their stay on Plum Creek brings, there are times of great love and joy for the family. Parties, a beautiful Christmas tree at the church, the rescue of Laura’s lost doll, Charlotte, and Pa’s miraculous survival of a blizzard in which he waits out the storm beneath a roof of snow in the creek bank, eating the Christmas candy to keep alive. The cheerful spirit and admirable endurance of the family shines through in every chapter, drawing the reader closer into the life and times of this beloved pioneer family.
Interesting Notes About On The Banks Of Plum Creek
This was my favorite book of the Little House series when I was a child. I grew up on a creek along which plum trees grew wild, just like Laura and Mary did and I read with rapt delight their adventures in this especially vivid volume. From Willy Oleson’s velocipede to Ma’s honey colored vanity cakes, the stories in On The Banks of Plum Creek depict the Ingalls’ family life with such warmth. Laura’s love for her father is particularly poignant in this book and the reader’s admiration for the skills and strength of both parents continue to grow while reading about their handling of all the challenges they face. In real life, the Ingalls family reached their lowest point during this period. In addition to the horrific biblical-like plague of grasshoppers that left Charles Ingalls deeply in debt, the couple’s infant son died and poor Mary Ingalls suffered a stroke and was left permanently blind. The resilience with which the Ingalls fought their way back to more solid ground after all these tragic losses is rather awing, and though the hardest facts are considerably softened in the fictional account given of this time in On the Banks of Plum Creek, enough is told to indicate what a desperate few years Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family went through. To this day, thousands of families make a pilgrimage to the Ingalls Dugout Site, perhaps to dig a little deeper into the life lessons of survival in the face of personal disaster which this special book so eloquently teaches.
By The Shores Of Silver Lake (1939)
Synopsis:
In debt and having lost his crop, Charles Ingalls go west to find work in Dakota Territory and then sends for his family to join him. Ma brings the girls on the train, and the reader is deeply saddened to learn that little Mary Ingalls has gone blind. Laura acts as Mary’s eyes as they travel to a railroad camp where Pa has gained employment as a paymaster. It isn’t an especially happy time, with so many rough railroad men around whom Pa has to use all his wits to keep in line, but Laura finds joy in the great openness of the prairie once again and in riding horses with her cousin. When camp breaks up, the railroad lets Pa move the family into the lovely surveyors’ house with its pantry full of delicious dry goods. The Ingalls are snug for winter and greatly enjoy the companionship of their only neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Boast. The two families celebrate Christmas and New Year’s together and as soon as the good weather returns, Pa has to race to stake his homesteading claim before someone else takes it.
Dakota Territory looks like it will be settled up soon and among their new neighbors will be Royal Wilder and his little brother Almanzo who arrive with horses so beautiful, Laura cannot help admiring them. It’s like starting all over again for the Ingalls family, in a new little claim shanty with a new well to dig, trees to plant and new challenges to surmount. But for a moment, the reader gets to take a rest at the end of the book, with the family settled in and Pa playing his fiddle in the evening shadows.
Interesting Notes About By The Shores Of Silver Lake
Despite many memorable moments and excellent writing, there is a starkness and heaviness in the mood of this specific installment of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s story that has always made it my least favorite of the series. As a child, I just couldn’t believe that poor Mary had gone blind, and certainly, few modern juvenile fiction works would include such a harsh turn of events. As an adult, however, I’ve come to appreciate this book more for the very fact that it tells the hard truths of the family’s tragedies. The coming of the railroad through Dakota territory is certainly of historic interest with its industrial implications and Ingalls Wilder does a marvelous job of describing the incredible stillness of this part of the country that is so soon to be broken by the train whistle. The lost buffalo and the presence of ‘half-breed’ neighbors in the form of the admirable character Big Jerry indicate a rapidly changing America. Laura Ingalls Wilder was an eye witness to these huge changes as they were unfolding and there is a sense of transition, movement and energy in By The Shores of Silver Lake that makes it a very interesting read.
The Long Winter (1940)
Synopsis:
Life is looking up for the Ingalls family on their tree claim in DeSmet, Dakota Territory. Laura is old enough to help Pa with the haying and she is making good friends at school. The town is growing and Pa decides to move the family into his store building in the town for the winter after an Indian elder warns the settlers that a blizzard is coming. No one is prepared for the violence and endless length of the storm when it hits and Ma, Pa and the girls must endure one of the bitterest episodes in their lives. Isolated from their neighbors by the snow, unable to purchase food from the stores once supplies run out and forced to twist and burn sticks of hay to keep from freezing, the Ingalls approach starvation. If not for the bravery of young Almanzo Wilder and his friend Cap Garland who ride out into the middle of the blinding blizzard to find a supply of wheat, the whole town of DeSmet might well have perished before the snows finally melted and the trains could come through. When, at last, the long winter ends, the Ingalls and Boasts celebrate Christmas in May, eating their first really satisfying meal in more than half a year. The reader is weak with relief to join them at this festive table where gratitude for survival is deeply felt by all.
Interesting Notes About The Long Winter
There truly was a notoriously hard winter in DeSmet that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family just barely managed to survive and her retelling of those dark, monotonous days of hunger is unforgettable. A hypnotic atmosphere is set by the endless tasks of twisting hay and grinding wheat kernels into flour for daily bread, and I am always filled with admiration for the way in which the parents manage to keep the family alive, both physically and psychologically. Unlike so many of the Little House books, this one has only sparse moments of cheer. It’s not a light or fun book, but it is a remarkable tale of endurance. To this day, poor families in the Dakotas face real hardships during winter, but for many, so much is alleviated by electricity, snow plows and modern communication tools. In 1880, settlers had none of these life-saving luxuries and yet they managed to come through alive, if not fully well. I was very sad to read of the toll the real-life Long Winter took on both baby Carrie and Pa who never seemed to fully recover from the malnutrition they suffered. The whole family is terribly weak by the end of the ordeal, and this is why it is such a relief, after reading The Long Winter to turn to the next book in the Little House series.
Little Town On The Prairie (1941)
Synopsis:
As if she knew how much she’d put us through in reading of the Ingalls’ fight for life through The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder rewards us with sunshine, fresh, tender garden vegetables, funny incidents, laughter and hope at the beginning of Little Town on the Prairie. Pa’s tree claim in DeSmet is good and green again and Laura determines to help send Mary to a school for the blind by going to work as a seamstress in the growing town. Though many tears are shed at Mary’s departure for college in Vinton, Iowa, the whole family rejoices that Mary will now be able to learn so many things to make her life more fulfilling and rewarding. Meanwhile, town life grows especially gay with sociables, literaries and other fun events. Laura persists at school despite problems with her teacher and Nellie Olson, and Ma manages to turn an attack on the precious corn crop into blackbird pot pie for the whole family. Little Town on The Prairie culminates with Laura receiving her teaching certificate. Now, she must go out into the larger world on her own and put into practice all that Ma and Pa have taught her about self-reliance and inner-strength.
Interesting Notes About Little Town On The Prairie
Almost from beginning to end, this is a lighthearted tale. Not since Laura Ingalls Wilder’s first book have we seen her family living in such relative peace and prosperity. As with Little House on the Prairie, a caution is given here as to some racially offensive content in the form of a minstrel show, typical of its times, and adults are advised to explain the context of this to young readers. All fans who have followed the Ingalls family through their journey from the Big Woods to Dakota Territory will be sincerely relieved and glad to see Ma, Pa and the girls getting to enjoy some of the simple good things in life again and there is considerable historical interest in the descriptions of the types of social events the townsfolk participate in. In the days before TV and the Internet, people truly knew how to make their own entertainment and homesteading families of today may find some nice inspiration for pleasant pastimes in this lovely, enjoyable book.
These Happy Golden Years (1943)
Synopsis:
Laura accepts her first teaching position 12 miles from DeSmet in a small settlement of claim shanties, challenging herself to conquer her own nervousness so that she can continue to earn money to keep Mary in the school for the blind. As it turns out, her chief obstacle comes not from the few students she must instruct, but from the Brewster family with whom she is boarding. Mrs. Brewster has been driven to madness by the loneliness of homesteading and not only is the house filled with harsh words and dreadful manners, but one frightening night, Mrs. Brewster appears in the bedroom with a kitchen knife and has to be talked out of violent action by her husband.
Laura dares not tell Ma and Pa about the intolerable conditions of her life at the Brewsters’ for fear they will not let her complete her teaching term, but her discomfort is somewhat ameliorated by Almanzo Wilder’s unfailing service as a chauffeur back to Pa’s claim every weekend through the long, cold winter. Laura manages to finish out the term and wonders if that will be the end of her drives with Almanzo. In the end, a mutual love of wild horses brings them together as Laura helps Almanzo tame his team and soon it is apparent that the two are courting, despite the interference of Nellie Oleson. Mary returns from college and delights the family with her newly-learned skills and Laura goes to stay with a neighbor woman to help her hold down her claim while her husband is away. These Happy Golden Years culminates in the marriage of Almanzo and Laura and their arrival at Almanzo’s own claim – the little grey home in the west. The reader is left with a sense that a whole new story is beginning just as the book ends.
Interesting Notes About These Happy Golden Years
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s chilling description of life at the Brewsters is unforgettable and it is easy to believe that many settlers suffered severe depression from the isolation of 19th century homesteading. Contrasted to the Brewsters is the gentle stability of the home life Ma and Pa have built and there are many happy scenes of simple family enjoyments. This comparison of the two homes comes at a critical juncture in Laura’s life, just as she getting ready to embark on making a home of her own with Almanzo. In observing human relationships, she will have the power to choose what sort of home she will make with Almanzo. In fact, one of the key features of These Happy Golden Years is the shift away from Pa as the central character, to Laura who is now the true protagonist of the story, setting out to create her own life as a pioneer, just as her parents had done so many years before.
In many ways, this last of the ‘official’ Little House books is bittersweet in its meetings and partings, and fans of the series know that DeSmet really marked the end of Charles Ingalls’ traveling days. He and Caroline settled down in a little white home he built for her in town and spent the remainder of their years there. But Laura’s story was just beginning and would take her to such far flung destinations as Florida, the Ozarks and even San Francisco. These Happy Golden Years provides a leave taking for the readers, with the family still living within a few miles of one another and a nicely rounded ending to this series of treasured books.
The First Four Years (1971)
Published posthumously, The First Four Years was assembled from Laura’s notebooks by her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Readers sometimes express disappointment that the story does not seem to flow with the ease and continuity of the previous eight works, and in total, the paperback edition of this book is a mere 134 pages in length. Nevertheless, The First Four Years presents a fascinating account of Laura and Almanzo’s early married life and details the extreme difficulties they faced. In addition to struggling to keep the government mandated trees on their claim alive, the couple goes deeply into debt because of Almanzo’s dreams of a better life for them. They outlast hailstorms, blizzards and cyclones but when they contract diptheria, Almanzo suffers a stroke which leaves him with some permanent damage in his legs.
There is some sunshine in their lives: baby Rose, holidays, visiting with the folks, riding horses, but just as things are seeming to go well for the Ingalls-Wilders, their house burns down. Such hardships would prove the ruin of many people, but Laura and Almanzo show their true grit in picking themselves up from these trials and tribulations, ready to move forward into whatever life brings them next. Despite the darkness of much of The First Four Years, devoted readers can feel confident that whatever comes, this determined new family will make the best of it.
Interesting Notes About The First Four Years
At the beginning of this brief little book, Laura and Almanzo are shown discussing their future. Laura declares that she does not want to be a farmer’s wife, and considering the many hardships in her childhood as an observant farmer’s daughter, this is small surprise. She would prefer to marry a man with a steady salary that would provide her with a less risky, less unpredictable life. Almanzo, the ‘farmer boy’ from the prosperous family sees things differently, declaring that farmers are the only ones who are really free to do as they like. The engaged couple strikes a bargain – they will try Almanzo’s way for three years and if Laura isn’t satisfied with their circumstances at the end of this, he will become a shopkeeper or whatever else she would like. I can only attribute Laura’s ultimate decision to remain a farmer’s wife, after an almost incredible string of terrible luck, to the idea that she must have had farming in her blood. In spite of her early misgivings at the time of her marriage, in the end, she decides that the farming life is the good life.
The next decades of her life would prove the wisdom of her choice, and after several more setbacks, Laura and Almanzo bought Rocky Ridge Farm in the Ozarks and turned it into a thriving, beautiful, profitable dwelling place. They worked hard all of the days of their lives, but Laura had enough leisure time to begin contributing articles to a local newspaper and when she was in her 60s, saw the publication of the first of her Little House books. Had the Ingalls-Wilders not weathered life’s storms with such spirit, had they chosen a different lifestyle, who knows if we would today have the gifts of this unique series to enjoy and learn from?
In Conclusion
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life spanned America’s most accelerated period of growth and change. The little girl who rode in a covered wagon across the prairies spent her later years taking road trips with her husband in an automobile. Born at the end of the Civil War, she lived through both major World Wars into the ultra-modern times of 1950′s America with its atomic bombs, suburbs and electricity lighting up even the quietest corners of the prairies.
She was practical woman, admired by friends for her solid good sense, and in her own life, she moved with the changing times, but she never forgot her formative years as the daughter of a man who was always longing to be on the move, going west. In committing these memories to paper, Laura Ingalls Wilder penned an experience shared by countless Americans who witnessed the nation’s metamorphosis from the psychology of ‘unsettled’ to ‘settled’. The pioneer adventure was officially over and new generations of urban Americans would be hard put to relate to the experiences of their parents and grandparents. Ingalls Wilder’s work bridged the gap and has given all subsequent generations the chance to vicariously live in those very different days.
As a child, I simply loved the Little House Books because of the charm of the language, characters and stories. Like so many American children, I considered the Ingalls family my own dear friends. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to feel that one of the chief values of these great American stories is that they point a way back and out of some of the madness we’ve concocted for ourselves over the past 100 years. Man’s need for food, for clean water, for a place to live and a sense of peace has not changed, but modernity frequently treats these very basics as idle playthings, options or jokes.
I see escapes being made from the unhealthy trap of industrialization every time a family of today moves out of the city, plants a garden, makes something from raw materials with their own hands. Charles Ingalls’ ability to be a jack-of-all-trades for nearly ever basic human need, so vividly described by his daughter’s books, presents us with a model that is neither outdated nor unattainable. The more of us who are reaching back for the skills that were lost in the hypnotic consumerism of the 20th century, the better chance we stand of ultimate survival. Pa’s skills, and Ma’s, and Laura’s meant survival to them, and it is only by a marketing trick that so many Americans have come to feel that they don’t mean survival to us, as well. I want a healed human society and a healed planet, and I believe that the Little House books contain both practical and spiritual lessons that can help us thoughtfully achieve both things. For readers of all ages, on our precious and beautiful planet, these special books point a bright way down a good path.
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