On the Banks of Plum Creek

Good grief, as an adult and as a parent, have I grown too practical to read and completely enjoy these books? When Ma and Pa packed up the kiddos and left the Big Woods because there were too many people, less land and game to go around, I thought a little bit to myself, Um...Pa, did we think throug......more

It's easy to get so stuck on the subject matter of the stories Wilder tells that we fail to notice her brilliant, deceptively quiet writing. Her descriptions of scenery are gorgeous, of course; but I love the tiny sentences that tell so much, like this one when eight-year-old Mary and seven-year-old......more

The Ingalls Family versus the World Laura and her family drove their covered wagon all the way to Minnesota to begin life anew. Their new house? Built into a bank, with mud walls and a grass roof. A dugout. Ma is not pleased(especially when a cow manages to go through the roof!) but the girls found l......more

I did not remember this one being so SAD. I could almost not get through that chapter about the grasshoppers coming.......more

This is book #4 in the series. It can be read on its own, but there is much to be gained by knowing what Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and baby Carrie have experienced. For instance, the first book has them in the dense forests of Wisconsin in the last quarter of the 19th century. A lot of their exte......more