{"id":31625,"date":"2015-06-12T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31625"},"modified":"2020-08-07T13:15:21","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T17:15:21","slug":"the-long-lasting-impact-of-the-little-house-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/06\/12\/the-long-lasting-impact-of-the-little-house-books\/","title":{"rendered":"The long-lasting impact of the “Little House” books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Kuznicki<\/a> on the deep emotional grasp Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books are still having today:<\/p>\n

\u201cNot \u2018Harry Potter\u2019!\u201d says Alice, age five. \u201cI want \u2018Little House\u2019!\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the age of negotiated bedtime reading. My husband and I oblige, and tonight we read from Little House in the Big Woods<\/em>, the first installment of Laura Ingalls Wilder\u2019s fictionalized autobiography. We take turns reading: Alice reads, then I do, then Scott does. Then Alice reads again. It\u2019s never enough.<\/p>\n

What draws her in? A lot of things. The characters are mostly female, young, and strong. Laura herself begins \u201cLittle House\u201d at four, an age that wins our daughter\u2019s ready empathy. Not unlike the first volume of \u201cHarry Potter,\u201d Little House in the Big Woods<\/em> introduces an unknown world; done properly, that\u2019s always exciting. As generations already know, the story is clean and earnest, without affectation or smarm. And it\u2019s told in words that Alice can read all on her own \u2014 a great confidence builder.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sometimes hard to fathom, though, just how different Laura\u2019s life was from our own: churning butter, salting meat, boiling down maple syrup\u2026 Megan McArdle discussed all this in a recent piece for Bloomberg<\/a>. The \u201cLittle House\u201d books open up a lost world for today\u2019s kids \u2014 and for today\u2019s adults:<\/p>\n