I have a major love for Laura Ingalls Wilder. My obsession is so great that my friends poke fun at me.
Of course, they are “Twi-Moms,” so their vampire love and obsession with futuristic “Hunger Games” is hard to transfer to the adventures of a 19th-century pioneer girl.
My love of Laura Ingalls Wilder began in the 1970s, when I started receiving the “Little House” books as gifts from my aunt and uncle. The yellow-edged paperback covers had those charming Garth Williams illustrations of Laura, her big sister Mary and her baby sister Carrie. One by one, I read them all. I was just in the single digits then, so when Laura started courting future husband Almanzo, I was not as thrilled with the love story as I was with her adventures on the banks of Plum Creek scaring Nellie Oleson with leeches on her legs. But I did read Laura’s grown-up adventures anyway. And started back at the beginning again. And read them again. And again. Many times, over and over
By the time I reached adulthood, I have gotten rid of many of my childhood books. But all the “Little House” paperbacks still managed to remain on my bookshelf, and when I married my husband and moved to my own little house, Laura’s books came with me. They stayed in a box for a few years, until my daughter was born. One winter day I started revisiting those now-yellowed pages while my new baby napped. Over several cups of coffee on winter afternoons, I was immediately sucked in again to Laura’s world. How I loved these books! And what a different perspective I had now, as a wife and mother. Ma’s ability to “keep house” on the dirty prairie, magically create hearty meals from few ingredients, make holidays happy without money or the conveniences of stores on every corner, and raise her daughters to have a little spunk in a time when girls were not taught to have spunk. And don’t forget all those praire chores. God bless modern conveniences. And there was Pa’s endless upheaval of the family, dragging them all over frontierland, which was somehow not as romantic as I had found it as a child, and quite annoying to me as an adult. I think Ma was a saint.
Despite this, the wisdom of these pioneer women totally shined through the drudgery of their lives. They were strong, brave role models. I knew I wanted my daughter to know about Laura, so imagine my delight when I came across a series of books called “My First Little House,” a series of picture books based on Laura’s stories. I searched out every single one of them, and they soon became my daughter’s absolute favorite bedtime stories. We read them over and over, and over and over, and she was hooked. We starting watching re-runs of the 1970s TV show. When she was a bit older, I read every book in the series to her, chapter by chapter, night after night, until we finished. I explained American history and social history, and we watched videos of places Laura lived and visited on YouTube. I re-read the biographies and researched online to explain to my daughter some of the difference between the books and Laura’s real life. We made butter, just like Laura. She wore a “Laura” costume to her preschool Halloween party, much to the delight of her teachers and wore it again to school as she got older for “dress as your favorite book character” day.
I kept collecting books about Laura, including travel books and books featuring artifacts from her family’s life. My little girl could now see pictures to go with all those words. And soon she was reading the books herself. And reading them over and over.
We read “The Long Winter” during a particularly long, recent snowy winter. It really hit home for both of us, as we kept reading about the family starving and trying to figure it all out in our heads of what that actually would have been like, more than 100 years ago, to be hungry and cold constantly, to twist hay into “logs” to burn for heat while our hands cracked and bled, to shake snow from the bed coverings every morning, and numerous other real complications of 19th-century life.
When Wendy McClure’s book “The Wilder Life” was released last year, I could hardly contain myself at idea that someone else was obsessed with Laura as much as I was. And as it turns out, there are many people like me, many people who hope to do the “Laura Tour” of all the homesite museums, or attend “Laurapalooza” in the summer. There are countless web sites, books, homeschooling blogs and many others who revisit Laura’s pioneer life regularly and analyze what is true and what is fiction, and how it all fits in to our collected history. It turns out they even have a name: Prairie Heads.
Laura fans are now anxiously awaiting a new book to add to our collection. In 2013, the original “Pioneer Girl” manuscript penned by Wilder, will be released as a book. The manuscript is Wilder’s true life story, from which the “Little House” books are based.
Some may think my love of all-things-Laura is rather silly or old-fashioned, but I don’t really care. There are so many lessons to learn from this writer, daughter, mother and pioneer. If you travel beyond the “Little House” books to her journalism work, a reader can really get a sense of who Laura really, truly was. She was a wise lady, who lived a great life, and I am so happy to have “known” her.
Whether you pick up the Little House books or not, encourage your daughter to give it a try. Or just encourage your daughter to find her own “Laura.” Share something you love from your childhood with your child. It’s all about how you sell it, right? If I was not as excited about Laura’s life, my daughter may not have been as fascinated as she is with her. But enthusiasm goes a long way, and along the way, you and your child will share a special bond over a book, or two, or three. Revisiting Laura in adulthood has crafted a priceless bond with my daughter.
