Laura Ingalls Wilder unapproved!!

[IrmaFayLear]

www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/24/laura-ingalls-wilders-name-removed-from-book-award-over-racial-concerns

I know the books contain "unenlightened" views, but this book was of the time. If all racist views and comments are deleted from literature/history, then how are people supposed to know they ever existed?

The Ingalls family were pioneers - or settlers if you will. They were afraid - for genuine reasons - of "red Indians". Were the Native Americans in the right? 100%.

I don't want half-witted knee-jerk censorship. Frankly just about everything is going to have to be "unapproved" if we go down this road. The past is another country, not a country that didn't exist.

It would a shame if children stopped reading them. They are very good.
I still have all my copies. They are lovely books and really interesting historically. In one part Laura and her friend come across a girl who has marrried at 13 like the girl's mother and because it was written in those days Laura doesn't think it illegal but just how hard work it must be to marry and soon start a family then. It is a fascinating description of life in those times.

(Laura loved Indians - it was her mother who was worried they would be killed by them particularly when they went into Indian territory in error and the books are not particularly racist for their day; her father treated everyone equally, was on good terms with a French/Indian man I think - it is a book about tolerance as much as anything else surely.

Most of us learn a vast amount from reading old literature from many different ages and reading history from ancient Romans to all sorts.

The family has their life saved by a black doctor if I remember correctly

Off topic, but it’s actually still legal to get married at 13 (or younger) across the majority of the USA.

It's nowhere on any GCSE course that I am aware of (please correct if not) and no-one reads this stuff to their DCs - it's irrelevant all round Not LIW, but my DD has just studied Willa Cather's My Antonia for GCSE - a fabulous book about the pioneers. Not irrelevant at all - in fact never more relevant. A stunning read.

OM&M wasn't written to be children's literature. OM&M strives to portray both best & worst of human nature.

Interesting comment. So, if I write a novel and claim it's not written to be children's lit, and 'strives' to do something, that means it's quality? Sounds awfully easy.

I think there is rather a lot more complexity in the later Little House books than in Mice and Men. Don't get me wrong - I like Steinbeck and I love East of Eden, but Mice and Men is dull as fuck.

Who reads this stuff nowadays? It's nowhere on any GCSE course that I am aware of (please correct if not) and no-one reads this stuff to their DCs - it's irrelevant all round

Lots of people read these books, as evidenced by the fact that they are always in print and stocked by most children's book shops (in the UK). You wouldn't expect so see Little House on the Prairie on a GCSE course as the books are aimed at, roughly, 6-13 year olds, not 16 year olds.

There is a strong early feminist streak in laura too - she has to work hard and take responsibility from a very young age.

So many life lessons about personality, risk, trust, kindness.

Though of course there is a morality very much of the day - obedience is very much highlighted as the ideal though Laura can’t achieve it!

I think the merit is in the way the stories really are told from the point of the child - e.g. the boredom of waiting for the grown ups to stop yakking, the tedium of Pa’s Sunday’s as a child when he couldn’t play but had to read religious texts so snuck out and went sledging

Maybe we can just pretend that white people/settlers werent like this? Brush it under the carpet?

I think its history, and while we shouldnt romanticise it, we shouldnt just forget it because the zeitgeist has changed

Mice and Men is dull as fuck I couldn't disagree more.

Oh do me a favour! Are you seriously comparing Willa Cather with LIW?

Here's the clue

One of the above is a serious writer

You should get your thread title changed OP. It's incorrect.

I agree- it's not useful to re-write and sanitise history to pretend that things were always as they are now.

Thesearepearls You may not consider LIW a 'serious writer' but her books have stayed in print for a long time, and are well-loved.

I pooh poohed these books as a kid in the 70’s and 80’s as I though they would be schmaltz like the tv series. I read them as an adult whilst staying with a relative in America - the Goodwill stores were chock full of them. I don’t see them too often in the UK. I loved them. The period detail is engaging and the depiction of real hardship is far from the tv schmaltz. Without getting my copies out, my recollection is that native Americans are treated somewhat sympathetically?? Doesn’t Pa say something about being on their land? I also remember cringing a bit too at a few points as she was clearly writing in a time of different values but surely that would be part of the discussion/analysis of a book?

I’ve read a few biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder. My take out is that she mainly wrote the books.

Are you seriously comparing Willa Cather with LIW? Only in the sense that they are writing about the pioneer experience through the eyes of a child. Quite a few kids engaged with the book because they knew LHOTP.

Dear god, it's not on a GCSE course therefore no-one reads them? Are we only meant to read prescribed books? Has the concept of reading for pleasure passed you by? Is your name Gradgrind?

I found it fascinating re-reading the Little House on the Prairie books as an adult - it's such a completely different perspective. I find Ma Ingalls quite annoying but bloody hell she put up with a lot with Pa. They had very tough lives. The Long Winter is gripping.

There's a new biography out, Prairie Fires, which is on my holiday reading list. (Haven't read Pioneer Girl.)

Who reads this stuff nowadays? It's nowhere on any GCSE course that I am aware of (please correct if not) and no-one reads this stuff to their DCs - it's irrelevant all round

What a remarkable comment. God forbid that GCSE courses are any guide to 'relevance', especially since (I gather, as I am not from the UK) that Michael Gove's reforms took all US literature out of the GCSE syllabus, and surely this thread alone suggests that they are still being read and read to children, even if no one you know is..?

They are brilliantly effective novels, especially the more sophisticated later ones I think my favourite is The Long Winter in terms of their sureness of voice and detail, and what they manage to suggest using the fairly limited vocabulary of the form LIW was writing in, and the amount of self-censorship that was necessary, both in terms of the realities of the real Ingalls' lives, and for a young readership.

I have read all of the Little House books, including the ones about Laura's daughter, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.

I believe they are reasonably historically accurate. I live in Canada and many aspects of the history are very similar. People absolutely did travel in covered wagons - they were known as "prairie schooners". They literally got to where they would live and had nothing. They had to clear land, build a home, and try to set up a farm to make a living. There are still many aspects of the "pioneer spirit" visible in a number of communities in Canada, at least, IME. I think learning about the history is important so that we can learn from the mistakes of the past.

Agree with Tulips and Xenia

I remember feeling a strong sense of injustice aged 8 when I read the passage about the indigenous Indians being moved off their lands.

Also agree with Branleuse that it's important not to cover up the unsavoury attitudes of the time; it's important that DC today learn from them.

I wonder how a book by a native american child from the same era and beyond would read. White privilege in action.

Of course people still read Laura's books! I first read them when I was very young and I often re-read them.

have just dragged out my books including no less than 2 collections of letters (on the way home and west
From home) and a biog. I think I ordered all of these from the US so intrigued was I by wilder! The biog turned out to be a kids one so I shall be pleased to read the new one just put.

I also just dipped in to the second book and read the account of losing Jack the dog.
It is gripping. Really fine story telling.

Being educated in the USA we read Willa Cather. I don't remember anything about what we read by WC, but it was provided.

Never read LIW. I had no idea there were many LIW books before MN threads on LIW.

Melissa Gilbert is running for Congress against Trump!

You seem to have a very snobby, unimaginative and utilitarian attitude towards children's literature thesearepearls.