For those of you who don't know, Lisa from Books, Lists, Life is hosting an 8 month long Little House Read-a-long. Over the upcoming months we will be reading each of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The series contains 9 books, but we are cutting our Farmer Boy because is seemed a bit out of place in the series to begin with. So far we have read Little House in the Big Woods (February) and Little House on the Prairie (March). You can check out my review of Little House in the Big Woods here.
I started and finished Little House on the Prairie quite quickly. It was an easy read (I would hope- considering its target age is 8 or 9) and was enjoyable. Again, Wilder did a beautiful job with her vivid descriptions of life on the Prairie. I really enjoyed the traveling to the Prairie from the Big Woods as well. It was interesting to read about how the settlers traveled.
The biggest difference for me while reading Little House on the Prairie was how angry I was getting. I was super annoyed with how shitty they treated Jack (the brindle bulldog) and considering that I have a bulldog, I was totally annoyed by some of the descriptions of him. Either Wilder didn't haven't a bulldog or her memories are poor. For one thing, every damn bulldog I've ever seen may love the water, but they can't swim. They sink. Their legs are too short to paddle and hold up their body mass. I also kept getting really frustrated with the view of the Indians. Granted, I know that is how things went in that era, but it still was frustrating to read. Some of the descriptions of Laura's experiences with the Indians just put me off. I did like that Pa stood up to the other men- showed that he had some moral fiber.
Overall, my experience reading Little House in the Big Woods was much more pleasant than that of reading Little House on the Prairie. I enjoyed it, but not near as much as Big Woods.... the big woods just offered so much more whimsy along with the reality.
 |
| reading LHotP yesterday afternoon |
Next month we will be reading On The Banks of Plum Creek.
write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow
I forgot all about this, ack.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up some good observations. I tend to just read these books rather than think critically about them. I haven't read them in a few years, though, so I wonder if my thoughts will be different now than they were in the past.