Any Laura Ingalls Wilder fans?

[moondog]

I visited the LIW house and museum in Missouri a few weeks ago and it was one of the most moving experiences ever. I made a detour of thousands of miles to see it.
If anyone loves her just as much as I do I wanted the chance to tell you about it so that you can savour every delicious detail.

The Bloody Benders were real serial killers. It is said that they were in the original Little House on the Prairie but were omitted as inappropriate for kids (which raises a lot of eyebrows...). They were included later in "A Pioneer Girl" (written by Laura and Rose) and discussed at length in a famous speech where she was discussing how everything she wrote was true, but she took out things kids shouldn't know even if she did know them as a kid. In the speech and The Pioneer Girl she discussed Pa and the Bloody Benders - but later it was revealed that it couldn't have happened as they weren't in the area when the Bloody Benders were, the timelines of both give no overlap. Following the timeline also shows a lot of other issues, mostly with them breaking treaties with the indigenous populations.

See:
americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/selective-omissions-or-what-laura.html

americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/following-up-on-what-laura-ingalls.html

I think that Pa probably had some of the wanderlust and desire for adventure that many homesteaders had. My great grandparents came up from the Satates to settle claims in Canada, but they did so for the adventure and free land - not because they were particularly poorly off where they lived in Illinois. Apparently, my Great Grandfather wanted to move on again from their first home in Saskatchewan and carry on up further north, but my great Grandmother put her foot down!

I have just read all the links on this thread. Fascinating and illuminating.

"although we have to sympathise with Mary because she's blind, she wants to punch her she's so smug!"

I know what you mean. I am still reading LHOTP to DD, so it is before Mary goes blind. DD keeps comparing her her to Perfect Peter in Horrid Henry.

I am so looking forward to rereading all the other books and reading some of the later ones and biographies that I haven't read. This is a fantastic thread.

But Mary eventually recognises that in the last walk they take before Laura gets married. And says one shouldn't worry so much about being good. That's the moment when I like her.

Prairie, I go to the States a lot as since university, my husband and I have worked in a wonderful summer camp in the Blue Ridge mountains there and now we go and work while the children are campers which suits me fine as I am not a lie about in the sun type.So this year, my husband was working on the farm (which I often do) and I was running the gristmill and troutpond.

This is where we work and I love it so much

Then we travel and go and visit friends. Our connection goes back over 20 years so we have lots of people to see.
We took 3 weeks to drive from North Carolina to Georgia, then to Rocky Ridge, Hannibal (Mark Twain's birthplace) St Louis, Springfield Illinois (Abe Lincoln museum), Kentucky, West Virginia, New Jersey shore and NYC.
My dh is self employed and I get long holidays.

There was nofiddle magnet at Rocky Ridge or I would have bought it (magnets are the only souveniers I get, hickory nuts from RR being the exception) and I have one which is a facsimile of some commemorative LHOTP stamps, with the quote 'To make the most of what we have'.

I recommend The Wilder Life as a very funny and affectionate study in LHOTP obsessiveness. You lot would love it. She goes mad and buys churns on ebay.

I'd murder to make my own maple syrup.

At my old primary school we used to tap the many maple trees on the school grounds. It was mostly for educational purposes as you need an awful lot of sap to make any decent quantity of syrup.

mignonette It was my second degree and I was given the go ahead, once I could show that there was both enough secondary literature and yet enough gaps in the existing research. This was in, I think, 2001 or 2002. A lot has been added to the topic since but your friend is right. My tutor pretty much said that he wanted to read my diss on the topic, as it was unique (British university). I was the only one of my cohort to do a diss based entirely on secondary literature and after that, they banned anyone else from doing that. It was a course in librarianship, so I was being a bit cheeky!

Ooh - I think dd has a Pa's fiddle magnet! Did I mention that on the blog? I can't remember. We didn't look round the museum in Walnut Grove (I bought a Charlotte keyring in the gift shop) because we only had a few hours to spare and I wanted to spend them at the creek. I confess, paddling in Plum Creek was one of the best things I have ever done.

Prairieflower, I tried the maple toffee too, with equally disappointing results! Next time, I will try zzzz's tip. Grandma boiled it, didn't she?

Ooh - guess what I just discovered? Helen Dore Boyle, author of the Sue Barton series (can you still get them?), was Rose Wilder Lane's friend, travelling companion and housemate. She lived at Rocky Ridge too. Rose and Laura seem to have had a very difficult relationship. I'm reading 'Little House, Long Shadow.' I recommend it, but only if you're ready to have a few long-cherished beliefs questioned andxre-examined.

I never knew that, Georgian - that's fascinating!! I love the Sue Barton books - I really wanted nurse training and nursing to be just like in the books.

Can anyone put on a list of further reading/biography books please!!!
Thanks

I still maintain that Mary is a bit of a prima donna. I got a lump in my throat when I was reading out the bit where Ma reads Mary's letter saying she is not coming home from college for the summer. "All the light went out of the room" - I felt Ma's pain. And after Pa had spent all Laura's earnings on an organ, too.

Mary was just being a typical self-absorbed teenager then, from sound of things!

What about Carrie? Is it just me who gets the impression that after being really strict with Mary and Laura, and very keen on their education, Ma didn't have so much energy for Carrie/Grace?

I am cringing at myself, but I remember there's a bit where Carrie says 'don't' when she means 'doesn't and 'him' when she means 'he', and Ma corrects her grammar ... but I was shocked because you get the impression Laura is so nicely spoken and has such perfect grammar drummed into her.

Actually Mary was quite awful in the early books, she was horrible to Laura and wound her up over having prettier hair etc. Then when Laura lashed out she got into trouble.

Even as a child reader I wondered why Ma and Pa never had it out with Mary about being mean.

Yes, although it's not explicitly said, Laura is making the point quite clearly that Carrie and Grace were allowed to be children for a lot longer than Mary and she were. There's Laura doing endless chores and having to put her shoulder to the wheel to help Pa, yet the younger girls get away with just the occasional bit of bed-making.

Plus ca change, I suppose!

Yes, exactly.

I think I feel a bit sorry for Ma and Pa later on - when Laura goes driving the horses Almanzo hasn't yet broken, and she has to jump into the buggy when they stop without getting her hoop skirts trapped! I mean, can you imagine letting your 15 year old do that? You would be soooo scared for them.

Inspired by this thread, I have ordered one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder biographies. Sadly I am off to visit my mum for three days, so unless it arrives in the next half an hour or so, I am going to have to wait until I get back to read it.

So thrilled by this thread, I've been reading LIW to the dds (5 and 7) for a while. We're on Silver Lake and they're APPALLED that Mary is blind and nothing can fix it. The books have helped encourage dds to make their own beds (!) and eat sweetcorn, I'm definitely getting the cook book as we've been planning a Laura and Mary day where I shall con them into eating all sorts of esoteric stuff. Going to buy all the biographies now. My plan is to stop reading after Long Winter as iirc last two books really are for an older audience.

I never had the chance to read the LIW books to my dc - one downside of 3 boys.

My oldest nephew loves them - he dressed up as Pa for World Book Day one year, with a beard and a cardboard axe.
TBH I think SIL had decided to read them to her boys whether they liked them or not....

Dh had them read to him as a child, and he loved them. He and his brothers were always vexed there was no mention of toilet arrangements though

Bears, panthers, a pig on a sledge, naughty boys getting stung. I think most little boys would enjoy The Big Woods book. DS will be on the receiving end shortly .

Farmer Boy was DH's favourite

Ds loved them. Funny enough he loved the "Laura and Mary" stories more than Farmer Boy, and we still reference them. I read them to him because he is dyslexic and I remember a friend if my parents doing the same for their dyslexic son who adored them because the visual side is so clear and you can make so much from them, covered wagons, log cabins, etc.

I think I read the long winter most often. It was a horrid shock to read that Almanzo never met a blanket Indian in De Smet. But another instance of Laura's sympathy with the Indians. She would have been happier, on one level, in Oregon.