Little House in the Big Woods

File:Little House In the Big Woods.jpg

Little House In the Big Woods is children's book about a young girl living in the Wisconsin Big Woods forest in the early 1870s. The semi-fictional biography is written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1932 and begins the Little House Series of books. The story follows a family living in a log cabin in the middle of the Wisconsin wilderness in the 1800s. The story centers around five-year-old Laura, but includes her whole family, older sister Mary, younger sister Carrie, her ma Caroline, and her pa Charles.

This has been a cherished book of mine ever since my mother read it to my siblings me as a child. I also remember it being part of the reading material for a grade school class (4th, I think) though I wasn't at a high enough reading level to read it. It was the first book of any length that I read completely by myself, and I've since read it numerous times. Even though it uses a very basic writing style, I still appreciate it more than any other book in the series.

Status

I own a badly-worn paperback copy of this book and have read it several times. I have also listened to an audio book recording.

Review

Good

• The book remains interesting from cover to cover.
• Wilder successfully captures the world view of a small child. The book is all about how a five-year-old girl sees the world through play, pretend, and minimal responsibilities, but also all the dangers and fears.
• I really enjoy all the descriptions of frontier life in the late 1800s. It's such an alien world of manual labor devoid of electricity and plumbing.
• I enjoy the inclusion of songs throughout the book.
• The charcoal illustrations by Garth Williams are fantastic.

Bad

• Through most of my life, I assumed that this book was an accurate memoir of the childhood of Laura Ingalls, but I was disappointed to learn that portions of the book were modified to be more interesting, or made up entirely.
• I wish the book included sheet music because there are several songs I'm not familiar with, and would like to know the tune.
• The initial wood-block illustrations by Helen Sewell don't really fit a children's book.

Ugly

Nothing.

Links

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_House_in_the_Big_Woods - Wikipedia.
• gutenberg.ca/ebooks/wildersewell-woods/wildersewell-woods-01-h-dir/wildersewell-woods-01-h.html - A public domain version of the original printing.
• youtube.com/watch?v=ZHyE8kjmW00 - Cover to Cover episode.