It’s only November, but it’s never too early to plan for summer. Via Beyond Little House comes word of the first-ever LauraPalooza:
Click below for more information:
LauraPalooza1
I wonder if Thoughtful Husband, Tom, and Huck will consider vacationing in Minnesota this summer? 
It’s autumn, and here in the Bay Area the forecast is for a major rainstorm in the next 24 hours with 50-70 mph winds. Despite the high wind warning, this storm is good news for our drought-stricken state. The added bonus is that the weather finally feels like fall here. In celebration of the fall weather, I like to read (and re-read) certain books each year at the beginning of autumn to appreciate the changing seasons. This year, I am re-reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie. Here’s Laura’s description of fall:
“[Pa] stacked the small stack of hay by the barn. He cut the winter’s wood and corded it in a long cord against the house. Now he had only to get meat enough to last while he was gone, so he took his gun and went hunting.
Laura and Mary played in the wind outdoors. When they heard a shot echo in the woods along the creek, they knew Pa had got some meat.
The wind was cooler now, and all along the creek bottoms, flocks of wild ducks were rising, flying, settling again. Up from the creek came long lines of wild geese, forming in V’s for their flight farther south. The leader in front called to those behind him. “Honk?” he called. All down the lines the wild geese answered, one after another. “Honk.” “Honk.” “Honk.” Then he cried, “Honk!” And, “Honk-honk! Honk-honk!” the others answered him. Straight away south he flew on his strong wings and the long lines evenly followed him.
The tree-tops along the creek were colored now. Oaks were reds and yellows and browns and greens. Cottonwoods and sycamores and walnuts were sunshiny yellow. The sky was not so brightly blue, and the wind was rough.
That afternoon the wind blew fiercely and it was cold. Ma called Mary and Laura into the house. She built up the fire and drew her rocker near it, and she sat rocking Baby Carrie and singing softly to her.”
I’d like to end this week of re-posts with a reminder to myself about where I was around this time last year. Tom and Huck start a new school year on Monday, and having been a teacher myself, I always see the end of summer as the start of a new year, a time for review and for making new plans. Last year, for our _0th birthdays, Thoughtful Husband and I decided we’d take the family on an RV trip across flyover country. You can read about the reasons why here. We had a great trip, and one of our favorite stops was the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead in DeSmet, South Dakota.
“We don’t want to go to the Laura Ingalls house,” Tom and Huck whined in the RV. “Those books are girl books, and we’re boys. There’s nothing good there.”
That is a fairly representative example of the logic of 7 and 10 year old boys. They have not read even one of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. They have little awareness of who she was. But they knew they did not want to spend three days of our vacation re-tracing the steps of “some old-fashioned girl’s life” at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead.
Using the logic of a mother, I ignored them and popped in a book-on-tape (CD) recording of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s By The Shores of Silver Lake, the book that chronicles Wilder’s initial arrival at our eventual destination, DeSmet, South Dakota. I turned up the volume high enough so that I couldn’t hear the protest coming from the boys in the back seat. After a while, the whining stopped. The boys were in shock. This book described rides on fast ponies, rough men building railroads, howling blizzards, and wolves. Maybe it wasn’t so girlish after all.
“Mom,” said Tom, after listening to the story for a while, “Laura Ingalls was a tomboy. Tomboys are the only kind of girls I like. Her story is pretty good.”
That’s progress, I guess.
One of my favorite stops on our recent RV trip was the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead in DeSmet, South Dakota. The 150 acre homestead has been restored with 10 acres of crops and buildings that match the dimensions of the ones Laura’s family built in the 1880s. It also has additional buildings from the nineteenth century — a sod house similar to the one the Ingalls lived in in On the Banks of Plum Creek, a railroad shanty, and a one-room school house. It is surrounded by mile upon mile of prairie grass. Hardly a tree to be seen anywhere.
The Ingalls Homestead is a wonderful place for children, even those like mine, who aren’t familiar with Wilder’s books. Children are allowed to touch everything, even farm animals and old farm tools. Each building, whether house or barn or school, has an employee dressed in costume from the late nineteenth century to explain how settlers like the Ingalls family lived, learned, worked, and ate over one hundred years ago.
Tom and Huck got to use the farm’s nineteenth century machinery to make rope and pull the kernels off corn for animal feed.
Getting kernels off the corn
Making rope
They rode ponies and got to drive a team of horses pulling a wagon out to the one-room school house (with supervision). They had a lesson from the teacher in the one-room schoolhouse, a woman who attended and taught in a one-room schoolhouse herself. At the end of the day, they helped milk a cow and feed the chickens. They got to watch birds building a nest and observe a cat and her brand new litter of kittens. Sad to say we have never done any of the above in our suburban California town.
Pony ride
Huck drives the team of horses, Sam and David, as they pull a covered wagon to the schoolhouse
Tom described these kittens as “smaller than pickles”. They were tiny.
We camped at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead in a covered wagon for two nights, so we could see how a family fit in a covered wagon. (Answer: squeezed in close together.) We also built a campfire, roasted marshmallows, and watched fireflies (the first I’ve ever seen) twinkle in the prairie twilight. We were almost the only family there that night (just one other covered wagon had people inside), and we felt the vastness of the prairie and the peacefulness of solitude. I’ve never seen more stars in the sky. I heard the prairie wind stirring the grass and the sounds of cattle in the distance, much as I imagined Laura Ingalls Wilder may have over a century ago.
Our wagon:
Interior of the covered wagon
When our campfire had burned its last embers and we prepared to sleep in our covered wagon, Huck, snuggled on my lap, whispered to me, “Mom, this is my dream house.”
Mine, too.
Prairie twilight
The Laura Ingalls-focused blog, Beyond Little House, posted today about an article in this week’s New Yorker.
Written by Judith Thurman, the article reports what is old news to hardcore Wilder fans — namely, that Wilder’s daughter, the author Rose Wilder Lane, heavily edited and re-wrote her mother’s work. It’s still an interesting read, as it discusses the manifestation of Wilder’s and Lane’s political beliefs in their works. Even more interesting are the various responses and links to other responses to the article.
If you’re a Laura Ingalls Wilder fan, you’ll want to read all of it.
(hat tip: Beyond Little House)
I had planned to write a post featuring some of the books I hope to read before summer’s end. That plan has been interrupted by something much more important. I’ll write about summer reading tomorrow.
As a Laura Ingalls Wilder fan and collector, I am a regular reader of the Beyond Little House blog. I commented on a recent post that it was unfortunate that, to my knowledge, there was no single print bibliography of all of Wilder’s works, including her many articles and essays written for the Missouri Ruralist. A few hours later, another reader of the Beyond Little House blog emailed me to say that there is an online bibliography of the works written by or about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. (Thanks, Gina!) It’s the most complete bibliography for the two authors I’ve seen to date.
Here’s a link to Pioneer Girl, a site devoted to the “fact and fiction of Laura Ingalls Wilder.” Here you can find almost everything you could possibly wish to know about Wilder — the various places she lived, the various works she wrote, and you can even find out how to get your own research copy of Wilder’s unpublished manuscript, Pioneer Girl. The site also contains a list of all of Wilder’s Missouri Ruralist articles with a link to both text and image of each article.
If you click on the “Research Room” button on the site, you’ll see all of the bibliographic information.
Bookmark Pioneer Girl. This site is a valuable resource for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane scholars, fans, and collectors.
See you in the stacks!
Every now and then I receive questions like this one from readers of the blog:
How do I tell if my Little House in the Big Woods is a 1st edition book or not? It looks like the 1st edition books that I have seen on the web but I am unsure. Any help you can give me is appreciated!
First, it’s important to note the meaning of the term “first edition”, which booksellers who aspire to professionalism use to refer to the first printing of a book. Unfortunately, many booksellers abuse the term “first edition” when it comes to the Little House books. Wilder’s books were first published in the 1930s and were originally illustrated by Helen Sewell and Mildred Boyle. They were popular and reprinted many times. In 1953, the publisher issued a revised edition with black and white illustrations by Garth Williams. This edition has also been reprinted many times. Most recently, it was re-printed with colorized versions of Williams’ illustrations. Many times, particularly when shopping online, I have seen sellers refer to any copy with the early Sewell and Boyle illustrations as first editions. Since the books were reprinted many times, this is not technically correct, and any copy that is not a first printing ought to be identified as such, since most collectors are interested in the earliest appearance of the book in print.
The first edition (i.e. first printing) of any of the Little House books is always stated on the copyright page, as shown below:
Later printings have only a letter code on the copyright page with no statement of edition:
The letters indicate the month and year the book was printed, so it is not unusual to see different letter codes in different copies of the books.
Purple House Press has a very informative page here that shows the original covers and dustjackets of all of the Little House books, the key to the letter code that identifies the month and year the books were printed, and samples of Wilder’s handwriting. If you collect Wilder’s books, especially in first edition copies, bookmark this page and save it. It will come in handy. You can also find all kinds of information about Wilder and her books at the Beyond Little House blog, which is written by Wilder fans and scholars.
Remember, in the case of the Little House books, a true first edition (that is to say, the first printing of the book) always states “First Edition” on the copyright page. If that statement is missing, the book is a later printing. Just because the book has the earlier Helen Sewell and Mildred Boyle illustrations does not make it a first edition.
Hope this is helpful. I’d appreciate hearing from anyone else who has extensive experience with the Little House books and identifying first editions.
See you in the stacks!
Via the Beyond Little House blog, an announcement from announcement from Michael Edmonds, head of Digital Collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society.
The Wisconsin Historical Society has recently published on its website more than a dozen original letters written during the Civil War by relatives of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), author of Little House on the Prairie and other popular books for young readers.
Wilder’s famous novels are thinly disguised recollections of her childhood, and these private letters between her mother, uncles and an aunt shed light on the real-world adults whom she fictionalized. They include a four-page letter written by her mother, Caroline Quiner Ingalls, shortly after being married and others written by various uncles* while fighting in the Civil War.
The original handwritten documents are presented in color, accompanied by typed transcriptions, in the Society’s Turning Points in Wisconsin History digital collection. A lesson plan based on them has also been provided for the use of elementary school teachers who use the Little House books in the classroom.
Beyond Little House adds: “*Please note: Although the Wisconsin Historical Society website refers several times to the Civil War letters being written by Laura’s uncles, these letters were actually written by the brothers of Laura’s uncle, Charles Carpenter, who was married to Caroline’s (Ma’s) sister Martha. One of the Civil War letters is written by Laura’s aunt, Nancy Quiner, who married Ma’s brother Joseph.”
If you’re a fan of all things Laura Ingalls Wilder, as I am, check out Beyond Little House. Written by both fans and scholars of Wilder and her works, it is a treasure trove of new information.
See you in the stacks!
A busy spring weekend here. Finally, the grass is green, flowers are in bloom, and the fresh breezes of a new season are upon us. Here’s how Laura Ingalls Wilder recalled spring from her childhood:
“The white daisies with their hearts of gold grew thickly along the path where we walked to Sunday school. Father and sister and I used to walk the two and a half miles every Sunday morning. The horses had worked hard and must rest this one day, and Mother would rather stay at home with baby brother, so with Father and sister Mary I walked to the church through the beauties of sunny spring Sundays. I have forgotten what I was taught on those days also. I was only a little girl, you know. But I can still plainly see the grass and the trees and the path winding ahead, flecked with sunshine and shadow and the beautiful golden-hearted daisies scattered all along the way.”
See you in the sunshine!
I’ve written so many posts about Laura Ingalls Wilder this week that perhaps you might be wondering what has happened to my other passion — Dante. I have re-scanned all of the images the graphic designer needed to complete the catalogue and I gave them to her late Tuesday. At the moment, it’s all in her hands. I’ve done what I can do. I can neither move forward nor backward until I hear from her.
I guess you could say I’m in Limbo. 
(Sorry that’s a Dante joke, recognizable only if you’re familiar with Divine Comedy, and it’s a rather lame joke at that.)
Diagram of Dante’s Inferno, depicting the various levels of Hell, including Limbo
There’s a new post up over at the Beyond Little House blog, and it resonates with me so much that I wanted to direct you over there to read it. It’s called “Why Laura?” and it answers the question that I am sure must have occurred to those of you who are not (yet) fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder. You know who you are. You’re the ones wondering why a grown woman like me reads “childrens books” like the Little House series and and laughing at my suburban obsession with the details of a life in the prairie wilderness over 120 years ago. And if you are already a LIW fan, read the article. I suspect you’ll recognize yourself in the author’s comments. In any case, her essay speaks to the elegance and endurance of Wilder’s classic and simple books, originally written in her spare time and on humble notebooks.
I like all kinds of literature. Just because Dante and Laura don’t appear to have much in common — he was a medieval poet and she was a wanderer of the wild frontier — doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy them both. As Walt Whitman once said, “I am large. I contain multitudes.” That pretty much sums up my taste in literature and most of the other arts.
Now click on over and read that post.
See you in the stacks!
There’s a new Laura Ingalls Wilder blog: Beyond Little House.
Written by a group of Laura Ingalls Wilder fans and scholars, the blog has many contributors. It also has a section called, “Ask the Experts”, which is a place for readers to have their unanswered questions about Laura answered.
According to the site, “a few Laura fans got together and realized that in spite of all the invaluable information available all across the Internet about Laura Ingalls Wilder, there’s no easy way to get to it. No clearinghouse. No crossroads. And who’s to say that the info you come across is accurate or relevant? So we wanted to make sure anyone who wanted info on Laura had a place to come they could trust. And Beyond Little House was born.”
I’ve bookmarked the site, and if you’re a fan of the Little House on the Prairie books, I suggest you do the same.
See you in the stacks!
