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| Little House In the Big Woods is the first book in the original nine-book series: Little House on the Prairie is book three in the series. |
When my two girls were just babies I bought the complete Little House on the Prairie series. This taught me two things: Always gauge your kids’ interest in a book before buying the complete series and even if the kids are not interested in a series it can be worthwhile to buy it anyway. Although my girls didn’t care for the Little House books, I think owning this series is worthwhile. I started a new habit of only buying one or two books in a series and then waiting to see if the kids want to read more. This has saved me from having shelves of unread books on hand. In the case of the Little House books, these books appear on required reading lists throughout school. When my daughter was assigned a book review of a chapter book in second grade, she had already read Little House in the Big Woods at least twice- on audiobook in the car and with me before bedtime. The book review was very easy for her for this reason. I imagine other opportunities like this one will appear throughout her education.
There is a version of this book that is for language learners younger than second grade. It is a series of picture books that take vignettes from the early Little House stories (mostly the Big Woods) and adapt them into simple picture books. For my younger daughter, these stories are captivating- she loves the color pictures and the little girls. She has mimicked Laura’s curlers in her hair (from a vivid color picture) and created her own paper dolls like the ones that Mary and Laura played with. I bought her the paper doll collection of Little House (sold on amazon) and it has created hours of entertainment for her.
The Little House on the Prairie series is worthwhile on several levels. The most simple is reading level. At an early age, kids listen to it read out loud. When I put the audio CD in the car while driving, both girls would remain in the car long after I had returned home. They found they were more drawn in by the frontier tales than they thought they would be. (They would never listen to it if not strapped in their car seats.) Like all historical fiction, The Little House books use language from the historical period as well as technology relevant to the story. In Little Town on the Prairie, book seven in the series, Pa jokes, “By jingo, that plow can handle the work by itself (9).” This quotation illustrates at least two significant components of historical fiction. The slang “by jingo” is period specific- nobody says that. The second is discussion about the plow. Today Pa’s joke is reality- the handler just drives the vehicle. Back then, plowing was physical labor- and hard labor. “Pa had a new plow, a breaking plow. It was wonderful for breaking the prairie sod. It had a sharp-edged wheel, called a roller coulter that ran rolling and cutting through the sod ahead of the plowshare....Now after a whole day’s work, Sam and David gaily lay down and rolled , and pricked their ears and looked about the prairie before they fell to cropping grass. They were not being worn down, sad and gaunt, by breaking sod that spring. And at supper Pa was not too tired to joke (9).”
In the Little House picture book “Sugar Snow” their Grandpa is making maple syrup/sugar from scratch. The process of sapping a tree is illustrated with a color picture (see below). Perhaps there are rural people who sap their trees today but I have never seen it before- and my family owns a rural farm. This is a wonderful example of showing children how there was a time before Ralphs and Whole Foods. In learning how items were made from scratch the kids are exposed to a different way of gathering supplies- and a background on what happens to their food/household items before they reach the modern grocery store.
