This softened version of frontier life was brought to you in part by Rose Wilder Lane, Laura’s daughter and editor, who was a celebrated author and editor before Laura’s books came out, and was one of Ayn Rand’s best friends.
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Yes, read them and use them as an intro to the Myth of America.
They do an excellent job explaining how the US sees itself. My (Indigenous) family uses them to teach younglings about what settlers really are/were did/do.
They’re beautifully written books, for sure. And another good lesson to teach is that nothing that feels that good when purporting to tell an even semi-accurate story about real events is a warning sign all its own.
My son went to Laura Ingalls Wilder Elementary School, and I still decided not to read them to him! There are so many much better books to spend your time with.
My oldest is 11, and while I have old copies, I have never read them to the kids and they ended up on a high shelf. There are too many better things to read.
It’s worth a lot! Thank you. I like reading old books to my kid because they were a big part of my childhood, but I edit on the fly a lot plus pausing for Big Conversations. I feel I’d be pausing for Big Conversations every other paragraph. So maybe those books can take a rest in my own childhood.
They are not badly written, to my mind, but the problem is that they're written for kids too young to properly have the discussions you would need to have with them about the racism, etc.
Nah. I’ve been having conversations about racism from a VERY young age with my kids. I’m not worried about how well or not they are written, and we don’t need to read them to keep having the important conversations about racism and colonization.
I enjoyed the cadence for reading aloud. But I don’t think kids old enough to sit and be quiet for a full chapter are too young for these kinds of talks. You start when they are little and you talk about it all the time
It's never too young to start the conversation. I mean only that there's a mismatch with the text. Like, I'm not exposing a kid to "the only good [] is a dead []" from a supposed protagonist--the mom, no less!--until they are WELL along. But that's my judgment, everyone can have their own.
And even though these books were softened they are still quite brutal in spots. Thinking specifically of the scene where everyone’s was passing out from hunger and cold and Laura was twisting hay into packets to fuel the woodstove
Forget which book it was, later but not at the end. Read them to my kids when they were little. (Preferred Louise Erdrich’s Birchbark House series, but didn’t know about it till my son read the 1st book for school)
People are saying kids who like these books are too little to talk to about genocide, racism and right wing propaganda, but I am not sure I agree. Maybe it was a mistake. Was tough to find stuff both kids liked, the library had the books, the cadence was sleep-inducing and we had some good talks
When I was in 3rd grade those books were very popular, a bunch of us each bought one book at the scholastic book fair and then we traded them around, and our teachers got alarmed and did a 2 day teach-in about the genocide of indigenous people. One pro of a private school, I guess.
Amadi! You’re here!
I loved the Little House books as a kid—reread them many times—and a lot went over my head. (Though I never forgot “Ma hated Indians.”) But rereading them as an adult, you definitely notice more: references to Native Americans being forced to give up land, and Pa not minding.
The language is pretty awful in retrospect. Lots of uses of the s word. And the pilot of the tv series is appalling by modern standards. They're still airing it on hallmark channel.
You know what's also appalling? I read them in the early seventies, as a kid, and popular media of late 60& early 70s was *worse* than the Little House books. (Please note that Rose's personal writing, shaped by her Objectivism, was also worse. )
Have nine of them ever seen Ken Burns The Dust Bowl? Honestly, it's one of favs. Mostly because my grandma used to tell me stories (she grew up in Kansas right after the great depression) about the various hardships they had and games she would play.
After the books, Almanzo Wilder suffered a disabling stroke, the farm that he and Laura eventually settled down on never paid the bills, and the only reason she stayed afloat all those years was that she wrote a column for a paper about how to make a farm pay, a thing she’d never managed to do.
If you ever read FREE LAND by Rose Wilder Lane (this came before Laura’s books—it’s about a homesteader in Dakota Territory who lives through the same Long Winter that you see in the Little House Books, and contains some similar anecdotes) it’s trying so hard to be libertarian.
The main characters struggle. They get frost bite so bad they nearly die. They start off with like $1500 and end up $900 in debt, and that’s with multiple lucky breaks like “being able to sell the wheat” and “randomly planting turnips when there’s a shortage back East.”
The ending is that they’re able to start staying afloatbecause someone comes through with a flock of sheep and the husband dies of malaria and the wife is like “shit, I can’t keep all these sheep, I need to go back home” and then the guy’s dad gives him a few thousand bucks to pay off his loans.
Ivan Doig's Scotch Heaven books touch on some of this as well--especially about the impact of accident and illness on their lives. DANCING AT THE RASCAL FAIR is also a nice Little House antidote.
There's also a year missing in the Little House series where Pa loses all of his crops (and goes on government assistance) and the family lives above a saloon.
At one point they were so poor after moving yet again that they were literally living in a hole dug into a hillside but yeah, let’s all homestead. Who has a shovel? 🫠
And the Ingallses made it through the Long Winter because Almanzo (I don't think it was Pa?) blackmailed the guy who had the seed corn. Other people did starve.
It was Almanzo and Cap Garland who made the wheat run in the books, IIRC. I think Pa offered to go but they said no, you have a family, because if a blizzard came up when they were traveling odds are they wouldn’t make it back.
Also, banks and independent investors back east lent a lot of the money to these homesteads, and simultaneously touted the virtues of hard work to the people who had, in essence, become their tenants and essentially debt slaves. Yes, societies sustain communities, but exploitative systems...exploit.
Yah. My great-great grandmother took an ox-drawn sled in dead of winter from upstate NY to get first dibs on a pair of homesteads in Michigan with her four sons. Two went west, one stayed, one started a farm machinery business. Small farms seem more stable when there's a pension or an off-farm job.
Correction: that was my great-great-great grand mother who with three yoke of oxen & so forth.
Her son was my great-great grandfather, the one who started the farm machinery business which helped keep the farm and ... apparently he wrote a lot of "letters to the editor" as a known abolitionist. 😍😍
Thank you for the work you put into this site, Courtney. These are deep insights, in terms of how people are seeing their futures in the world we're living in.
Common western homesteader fact: once married women were allowed to work, farm and ranch wives’ jobs in town kept the farm afloat.
Many of these women were/are teachers.
Socialism saves the family farm!
This reminds me of Kennedy’s Senate hearing today where GOP senators tried to cast Biden admin’s new rules to increase nursing ratios* at rural hospitals were denigrated (*higher ratios=better patient outcomes, +more job demand) & lauded his answer pushing AI replacement of healthcare providers.
just this ongoing idea that red rural states (who rely intensely on govt funding) can go it alone, even w/o other humans, and be just fine, even though that’s counter to literally everything we know about medicine & health—& knowing rural Americans have much worse health outcomes.
I grew up 30 miles from Walnut Grove and lived through the 1980s farm crisis (IYKYK). My father, a 4th gen farmer of that land died at 56 from a heart attack. I made more money in college work study in the 90s than my father did farming per year. I worked hard to NOT be a farmer for lots of reasons.
Relevant aside: Almanzo Wilder’s stroke was caused by diphtheria, a couple years before the anti-toxin was discovered, and a few years before the vaccine.
All of the GIF sites have decided to return anything but what you searched for, so please pretend that this skeet is Anna Sheridan screaming as John nukes her and a buttload of Shadows.
Laura’s parents moved all the time because Pa couldn’t make a go of farming. They survived on the kindness of others. Which for libertarian coded books was pretty ironic. To be self sufficient takes community
The book I need to finish on this is Prairie Fires, by Caroline Fraser. I have it on audio but it's the kind I'd want to highlight the heck out of for later use.
It comes across better in the books than the TV series, to be honest. It seems to me like a lot of the idolizing comes from the TV, not the books.
Don't get me wrong--I was a fan as a kid and all.
But. Maybe it's growing up in Oregon and knowing about my own settler history
plus reading authors like James Stephens (especially Big Jim Turner) and H. L. Davis (Honey in the Horn) stripped a lot of the illusions from that particular settlement story.
Actually, I strongly recommend "Honey in the Horn" as an nice antidote. https://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/honey-in-horn
That’s why as a gardener I try to let people know that it’s almost impossible to be totally self sufficient especially if you live in a city yard. People underestimate how much goes into growing food
Sometimes it’s there. Ma’s reaction to Mrs. Boast setting a hen for them - as gratitude for the Ingalls giving shelter to the Boasts the previous winter - and even more so when she realizes Mrs. Boast has sexed all the baby chicks so there won’t be surplus roosters.
I think (if I’m remembering Prairie Fires correctly) that she also pulled in a fair amount from taking in paying guests at the farm with the selling point being the fresh food - essentially running a B&B.
My wife loved the Little House books as a kid & has been re-reading them for the last few months.
The biggest thing she's noticed as an adult is just how much grinding, suffering poverty gets glossed over. Second is how much bullshit Caroline puts up with from Charles.
Pa went on my shit list when I found out that Jack, the brindle bulldog, didn’t die, but was LEFT BEHIND WITH NEIGHBORS.
“Here, half-pint. Let me take the one constant friend you have in life away from you b/c he’s too old to walk to my 5th ill-considered upheaval of our lives”
Charles was the worst husband, I swear. He was lucky she didn't poison him, bury him where he stood, and go back to her better off family in Wisconsin.
Ugh, I like to think I lost the rose tinted glasses years ago when it comes to the Little House books, but the Ayn Rand connection (which I hadn't heard before) just packed a punch.
Yes. I have not read Prarie Fires myself but I read several good discussions on it that detail how much of the Little House books were sanitized and how often the family was taking other jobs to make ends meet.
Not unique to American farms either. I love the BBC Farm docudramas and through every series they talk about the other jobs farm families would take for extra money. Farming is precarity.
There’s a fantastic book about this called ‘Prairie Fires’ by Caroline Fraser that goes into immense detail about the Ingalls and Wilder families, absolutely fascinating
Comments
They do an excellent job explaining how the US sees itself. My (Indigenous) family uses them to teach younglings about what settlers really are/were did/do.
Very accessible books that can demonstrate the difference between the “official” schoolbook history & *actual* events
I loved the Little House books as a kid—reread them many times—and a lot went over my head. (Though I never forgot “Ma hated Indians.”) But rereading them as an adult, you definitely notice more: references to Native Americans being forced to give up land, and Pa not minding.
I try to read it every winter.
It makes me realize how easy we have it.
Her son was my great-great grandfather, the one who started the farm machinery business which helped keep the farm and ... apparently he wrote a lot of "letters to the editor" as a known abolitionist. 😍😍
Thank you for the fact check!
Many of these women were/are teachers.
Socialism saves the family farm!
Don't get me wrong--I was a fan as a kid and all.
But. Maybe it's growing up in Oregon and knowing about my own settler history
Actually, I strongly recommend "Honey in the Horn" as an nice antidote.
https://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/honey-in-horn
The biggest thing she's noticed as an adult is just how much grinding, suffering poverty gets glossed over. Second is how much bullshit Caroline puts up with from Charles.
“Here, half-pint. Let me take the one constant friend you have in life away from you b/c he’s too old to walk to my 5th ill-considered upheaval of our lives”