Have you read Laura Ingalls Wilder's books?
Actually, I have read all the
Little House books, but rather late, and there's kind of a funny story about that.
When I was a little boy, somehow I came into possession of
Little House in the Big Woods, but I didn't like it because it utterly mystified me. The Ingalls were living in what were clearly pioneer conditions (log cabin, etc.), yet somewhere near the beginning of the book, there is mention of the story happening "80 years ago," or something like that. Even in the mid-1960s I could subtract, and I just didn't get how the Ingalls were living as primitively as Daniel Boone. I don't think I even finished the book.
Then I was in my first years of high school when the pilot for the TV series aired, and my whole family watched it, and suddenly it made sense to me. (I guess when Mrs. Wilder wrote her books, the events she described
were "80 years ago.") The whole family watched the pilot, and then I got interested in the stories, and so did my mother and my grandmother, so we all read all of them. So there I was, a 16-year-old boy, reading the
Little House books.
I found it interesting to read about what life was like for an ordinary family in the time and places where Laura Ingalls grew up. I guess that was the burgeoning historian in me; the books were like historical documents.
I've never read
Pippi Longstocking, or
Little Women (though I've thought I ought to read Louisa May Alcott because I think she's an important figure in literature, and, again,
Little Women takes place in the 1860s). I've never even heard of Maude Hart Lovelace.
I think we read
Harriet the Spy in school. I know I've read it, but not on my own.
I've never read any Nancy Drew, but I've also never read any Hardy Boys.
Edit to Add: On second thought, it was probably "60 years ago" rather than "80" for the
Little House books. The memory comes back to me now that I was thinking in, say, 1965, that "60 years ago" there were already automobiles, and telephones, and so forth, yet the Ingalls were living in a log cabin in pioneer conditions? It made no sense to me, so I gave up. If Mrs. Wilder wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, and I guess she did, then the 1860s and 1870s were "60 years ago," and the stories made sense. As I said, by the time I read them, they were like historical documents of life in the time and place where the stories were set because they were based on Mrs. Wilder's memories.
Of course, there is a controversy over whether the books were actually written by Rose Wilder Lane, Laura's daughter (you should look her up; she was quite an interesting character). In high school I read a book by Lane called
Let the Hurricane Roar, and it could have been a condensed version of the
Little House books. The main characters are a young couple named Charles and Caroline (sound familiar?) who settle on the plains. It seems to me there were other things in the story that reminded me of the
Little House books. The title seems to come from what I guess was a popular hymn of the period that is mentioned in the
Little House books.
Topic: In the New Yorker... (Read 2403343 times)