Little House on the Prairie (Little House, #3)

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

A family travels from the big woods of Wisconsin to a new home on the prairie, where they build a house, meet neighboring Indians, sink a well, and fight a prairie fire.

• ISBN10: 0060264454
• ISBN13: 9780060264451
• Publish Date: 3 November 1953 (first published 14 October 1953)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 11 September 2008
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperCollins
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

I read these books as a child, and though I don't tend to re-read, I thought this would be a good book for my reading challenge. It was really interesting reading this through an adult lens. I always thought Laura was spirited, but she was quite sassy as well. Some of her comments had me laughing out loud. I also loved seeing how people lived back then, and I lucked out, that this was the book, where Almanzo starts sort of courting Laura. It was cute how oblivious she was to his interest. This was a fun revisit to a childhood favorite.

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[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

Little House on the Prairie was a staple on my eight-year-old bookshelf but as I grew older it started to collect dust and was eventually removed off the shelf completely to show that I had moved on to a higher reading level, similar to Andy boxing up Woody in Toy Story because playing with toys was uncool. Anyway, I recently brushed off the dust and read it for the first time in over fifteen years.

When I first read Little House on the Prairie I was overwhelmed by the coolness of Laura playing in the tall prairie grass with her sunbonnet swinging down her back, with a vigilant look-out for Indians after chore time. Now, after passing 8th grade history and learning of Indians being "pushed out" of their homeland (and let's face it, they did call shotgun first...) Charles "Pa" Ingalls sense of entitlement over his land (despite being on reservation territory) annoyed me and lost a little respect for him even with his strong work ethic and trust in the Osage tribe.

Racism and prejudice was also lightly touched on in this book, Ma while perhaps worried for her families safety proclaims "I don't like Indians" washing her hands of the subject. Ma, the June Cleaver of her time doesn't like someone? How can this be? I have always been disgusted by prejudice and racism so was a little disappointed in Ma. But on the other side of the coin, I realize this was a different era and was probably (if unfortunate) an accurate depiction of the time.

When I was younger, I thought the farm animals were awesome, as was building the house,well, Indians and even fever 'n' ague. Now, fifteen years later I was a little less wowed. I still love the Little House books, but found this book more eye-opening than I did at the age of eight.