Little House Series and Pioneer Girl Readalong

[juneday]

I do want to be fair to both Rose and Laura, which is why I'm trying to read a great deal about both.  But generally Rose somehow manages, through her own words in letters and diary entries, to just piss me off time and time again.  I think I've mentioned in this forum before about a letter she wrote to Almanzo, when Laura was visiting Rose in San Francisco, about how fat Laura had gotten. The entire letter was printed so you couldn't say something was taken out of context.

Yes, that's exactly the letter I was talking about... I remember reading that and just being so horrified that you would write that about your own elderly mother...much less send it to your father!

 

That's an interesting story about Rose. I feel bad for her as she had fallen on hard times, but she sure could have handled that situation much better. I, too, would love for her diaries to be published. I always wondered why she had so much resentment/disappointment/negative emotions towards her parents, especially Laura. It might be her bouts with depression causing the negative feelings, but I have never read anything that would cause me to think that Laura and Almanzo weren't good parents to her. They did seem the "tough love" kind maybe, but weren't most 1800's-early 1900's parents? I think Rose resented how poor she was as a child, mostly.

I have yet to read Ghost in the Little House, but from some reviews I've read even that isn't too terribly sympathetic to Rose.  Supposedly one story in it says that one time Laura (elderly at the time) fell down in a public setting and Rose refused to help her get up, and actually took pleasure in the fact that her mother was helpless.  No idea if this story is true--it was in one of the reviews I read of the book.  Didn't make me too sympathetic to Rose, that is for sure.  Everything I've read about Rose makes her sound like a spoiled, petulant brat.  I get that she grew up poor and it scarred her.  I realize she had some mental health issues.  But behind all that comes a picture of a woman who just wasn't all that nice.  

 

Maybe A Wilder Rose will change that picture for me.  I'll post here when I've read it.

I remember reading the review of that as well. Maybe I should read it...I have yet to read Pioneer Girl so I have lots of Little House reading to do. Haha

[henrysmom]

I've recently read a few of the "continuing the story" books about Little House and I thought I'd share my thoughts.

 

First though, I want to preface this by admitting I really don't care for this sort of book--the "what happened after Pride and Prejudice" type of thing, so I am a little prejudiced against them.  But my sister bought a couple of these books, and I bought two  more, so why not see what other authors could bring to the Little House saga?

 

Turns out, they don't really seem to bring much at all in my opinion.

 

My favorite was easily Mary Ingalls On Her Own, by Elizabeth Kimmel Willard.  Alas, it was for all the wrong reasons.  The premise is that our favorite prisspot is off to college, on her own for the first time.  Almost right off the bat she meets a delightfully rude student named Mattie.  Thanks to the snark I've picked up on this site and TWOP, I adored Mattie right away because of the rude and arrogant way she treated Mary.  Mary, of course, is a brave and noble soul who hopes to change Mattie into another prisspot.  She fails, but does of course succeed brilliantly at college.  Mattie is sent home for being a disruptive influence at the school for the blind.  Oh well.  But it was fun hoping Mattie would pull a Mrs. Brewster and threaten Mary with a knife.  

 

Next favorite was probably Nellie Oleson Meets Laura Ingalls by Heather Williams, and this one I actually liked for the book itself.  While Williams didn't make Nellie likable, she did manage to make her relatable and even a little sympathetic.  

 

Farmer Boy Goes West also by Heather Williams was okay.  Nothing spectacular but a nice quick read.  I did notice a couple of dialogue anachronisms at the end that made me grab my phone to check if the words were in common usage at the time the book was set (they weren't), but other than that, the book was interesting enough.  My sister really liked this one so maybe others would too.

 

Finally, there was Old Town in the Green Groves by Cynthia Rylant.  Wow.  This one was just odd.  It was like the bizarro world of Little House.  I don't know what the heck was up with Pa.  He seemed to be tossing nicknames at the girls every two seconds, said things like "Deeelightful!" and just seemed peculiar.  Back in the days when I was a children's librarian I loved recommending Rylant's books to kids.  Missing May is a brilliant book about grief, and her Henry and Mudge series is one of the better beginning readers' series out there.  But this book was just a huge fail to me.  The characters were just not right.  New characters, like the people the family meets in Iowa are just cardboard, and the family is just not the family of the real books. The worst thing is that Laura is DULL. In this book she didn't interest me at all.  And considering that Rylant wrote such a fine book on death and grief, the way little Freddie's death was handled in this book just seemed cold and aloof.  

Edited May 27, 2015 by henrysmom

[Crs97]

Supposedly one story in it says that one time Laura (elderly at the time) fell down in a public setting and Rose refused to help her get up, and actually took pleasure in the fact that her mother was helpless.

Do you think they are referencing Laura's falling from the moving streetcar? She ended up in the hospital with a head injury. I do remember in the letter Rose wrote her father she mentioned they couldn't get any money from the streetcar company because it wasn't their fault. I thought that was an odd thing to mention after telling your dad his wife was injured pretty badly.

[henrysmom]

This is the quote from an Amazon review of Ghost in the Little House I was talking about:
 

There is one anecdote that truly disturbed me--the one concerning Laura's fall not long before her death and Rose's complete refusal to give her assistance. So what if her mother was penny-pinching, needy, passive-agressive, judgmental? If her parents didn't beat her, if the poverty, malnutrition and humiliation of her upbringing was the result of poverty and personal tragedy that couldn't be overcome despite bone-breaking work, what reason did she have to be so bitter she couldn't be bothered to help her 80+ year old mother up in front of friends at a restaurant after a humiliating fall? I agree with Mr. Holtz--it is a telling anecdote--but the person it casts a bad light on is RWL, not LIW.

 

Edited May 27, 2015 by henrysmom

[Athena]

The more you read about RWL, the more you see how she was a piece of work. Not to say Laura was perfect, and she and Almanzo may not even have been the most loving or wealthiest parents in the world, but at some point, I think children (as adults) need to get over certain resentments about their parents. I think Rose tried in her way to be supportive to Laura and Almanzo. The fact is, we probably wouldn't have had the series without Rose pushing Laura to write her life down in fiction. Yes, Rose probably did it more for the money. The problem is that Rose seemed very misguided about what her parents wanted. They did not want or need the house, car, or holidays she paid for. She really saw herself mentoring her own mother. I think Rose wasn't the worse editor, but she took it too far when she stole her mother's stories for her own.

 

 

Yes, that's exactly the letter I was talking about... I remember reading that and just being so horrified that you would write that about your own elderly mother...much less send it to your father!
 
That's an interesting story about Rose. I feel bad for her as she had fallen on hard times, but she sure could have handled that situation much better. I, too, would love for her diaries to be published. I always wondered why she had so much resentment/disappointment/negative emotions towards her parents, especially Laura. It might be her bouts with depression causing the negative feelings, but I have never read anything that would cause me to think that Laura and Almanzo weren't good parents to her. They did seem the "tough love" kind maybe, but weren't most 1800's-early 1900's parents? I think Rose resented how poor she was as a child, mostly.

 

One of the articles I linked above notes that Rose was essentially the child of refugees and that Rose was bullied and very lonely. Coupled with depression and the instability of poverty, Rose became bitter. Unlike Laura, she didn't have siblings or a larger family for emotional support. She lacked outlets and she basically took it out on Laura. I am an only child of immigrants so I know what it is like to grow up without much means. It can be difficult and you do want to travel away a lot, but Rose's level of resentment seemed deep. It's a shame really.

[juneday]

 One of the articles I linked above notes that Rose was essentially the child of refugees and that Rose was bullied and very lonely. Coupled with depression and the instability of poverty, Rose became bitter. Unlike Laura, she didn't have siblings or a larger family for emotional support. She lacked outlets and she basically took it out on Laura. I am an only child of immigrants so I know what it is like to grow up without much means. It can be difficult and you do want to travel away a lot, but Rose's level of resentment seemed deep. It's a shame really.

That makes sense. I know moving around a lot is usually very hard on most children, as well as not having any siblings to play with or relate to. I guess I just never could have any more sympathy for Rose than I do because I always thought of it this way: Laura had a similar childhood to Rose in terms of the poverty, moving around, and hard living conditions, and she never had the resentment towards Charles and Caroline that Rose seemed to have towards Laura and Almanzo. Now I know of course that Laura and Rose are separate individuals; and the fact that Laura had sisters to talk to and be around probably helped her feel less lonely and isolated. But they were both poor and both moved around a lot-in fact, it seems to me that the Ingalls moved more than the Wilders.

I may not be looking at this correctly, though, now that I'm really thinking about this-because Rose seemed to be a much more sensitive child than Laura was. So maybe she just couldn't handle the traveling, and the "roughing it" lifestyle like Laura could. That's not her fault, it's just sad that she took it out on her parents.

[henrysmom]

I'm still trying to give Rose the benefit of the doubt but dang is it hard.  I do admire her for her perseverance in getting the Little House books published.  She really did go the extra mile in that respect.  As to her writing the books, I just don't know.  Everything I've read by her just leaves me cold.  I see nothing with the power and beauty of the Little House books in what I've read of RWL's work so far.  I'm giving it yet another shot with Free Land.  Maybe since she based that on her father's story I'll find it more interesting than the other RWL books I've read.

 

Talking about Rose being rather like the child of immigrants, has anybody read the fiction book Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen?  I thought the premise was interesting--a young Vietnamese woman who immigrated to America with her parents as a young child struggles to get alone with her widowed (and very controlling) mother.  The author lost me somewhere in the middle of the story but she did raise some interesting points about the mother/daughter dynamic and how childhood difficulties could continue to haunt somebody even when they were an adult.

 

The link to the Little House books is that the narrator not only loved the books as a child, but thinks there may be a family connection to Rose Wilder Lane because a mysterious American woman visited the family's restaurant in Vietnam and accidentally left behind a brooch.  Lee (the narrator) becomes convinced that the woman was Rose Wilder Lane and the brooch was the one Almanzo gave to Laura during their engagement.  

[henrysmom]

Rose's Connecticut house is for sale.

 

http://danbury.dailyvoice.com/real-estate/danbury-home-laura-ingalls-wilders-daughter-lists-439k

[smittykins]

FINALLY got my copy today, can't wait to delve into it!

[Sharpie66]

I just have to share this here--while watching MSNBC over tge weekend, they kept on talking about the capture of the escaped prisoners in upstate NY. Their reporters were stationed in the nearest "big" town, where the surviving prisoner is in the hospital. That town? Malone! Every time I hear its name mentioned, I always think of Farmer Boy.

[henrysmom]

I'm glad I wasn't the only one whose first thought on hearing "Malone" was Farmer Boy!

[Snow Apple]

Farmer Boy. Now I'm hungry.

 

Bet they don't have apples 'n onions in prison.

Edited June 30, 2015 by Snow Apple

[cathy7304]

Great minds think alike. When they were showing footage of the area, I was looking in the background to see if there was any signage relating to the Wilder homestead or for Farmer Boy.

[CherryAmes]

My name finally came up at the library and now have my hands on Pioneer Girl!  Am enjoying it so far but am I the only one who doesn't like the way the author refers to Rose and Laura as Lane and Wilder?  It really really bothers me!

[CherryAmes]

Yes, that's exactly the letter I was talking about... I remember reading that and just being so horrified that you would write that about your own elderly mother...much less send it to your father!

 

What a sec - wasn't Laura somewhere in her late 40s when she visited Rose in San Francisco?  It may not have been nice of Rose to point out that Laura had gained weight but Laura certainly wasn't elderly!

Edited July 10, 2015 by CherryAmes

[EllieH]

I finally got off the library's waiting list for Pioneer Girl (been on it since January) and picked up the book yesterday!  Now trying to rush through my current read so I can get to that one.

[henrysmom]

A collection of Laura's letters has been released.  Some to Rose, to her publishers, and to teachers/schoolchildren.  Interesting stuff.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Selected-Letters-Laura-Ingalls-Wilder/dp/0062419684/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457967358&sr=1-1&keywords=laura+ingalls+wilder+letters

 

And Slate has an interesting interview with the editor:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2016/03/the_selected_letters_of_laura_ingalls_wilder_interview_with_editor_william.html?wpisrc=obinsite

Edited March 15, 2016 by henrysmom

[beckie]

Found this thread after hours of losing myself in the other Little House book thread last week. Decided to take the plunge and get Pioneer Girl. I'm glad I did. I got it yesterday and I'm about halfway done. I'm loving it!

Edited November 7, 2018 by beckie

[smittykins]

This weekend, I decided to reacquaint myself with Pioneer Girl, and I discovered a section where, in Walnut Grove, Laura has snowball fights with the boys at recess, which disturbs Mary so much that she grabs Laura by the hair to prevent her from going outside.  Then she blabs to Ma, who predictably says that she’s “too large to be playing like that and(she’s)nearly thirteen and needs to be more of a lady.”

What a prisspot.

(Yes, I do realize that was the attitude of the times, but still...)

[HazelEyes4325]

I came across a great fun fact recently about LIW.  According to the History Unobscured podcast, 11% of all people accused of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trails were ancestors of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Apparently, the Ingalls Family of that time (yes, the same Ingalls family) was on the wrong side of a number of property disputes with some more powerful families.  And, how did the other families settle these disputes?  By accusing members of the Ingalls family of witchcraft.  No other family in the whole ordeal had to deal with as many accusations as this family.

I don't know enough about Charles Ingalls to know when his family left the Salem area, although I can see why they didn't want to stay (they also lost at least some portion of their property through the ordeal).  I was telling this to my brother and his reaction was, "Well, Laura Ingalls lived pretty everywhere in the midwest, so maybe she was a witch just hiding from accusations?"

[Sharpie66]

So, Pa’s side were witches, and Ma’s side was FDR’s mom’s family. Interesting combo!

[Almanzo Wilder]

On 8/18/2014 at 5:22 AM, smittykins said:

Going back to the weather, is a freeze in July even possible?  And they had to put *cold* water on the corn to save it?

"When you use sprinklers to prevent freezing injury, you are using the energy that water releases when it freezes, and changes from a liquid to a solid, to keep the temperature in the ice right at the freezing point – 32 degrees F. As long as you keep the ice wet, the ice temperature will stay at 32 degrees F. If the ice dries out and water starts to evaporate from the ice, the ice will get colder than the air temperature as it evaporates."

https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/using_sprinklers_to_protect_plants_from_spring_freezes

[Prairie Rose]

I was rereading Pioneer Girl and wonder how things would have been like had it been published back in the 1930s as a standalone memoir meant for adults or even as a series of magazine articles as RWL tried to have published before the idea to break up the story into children's novels came up. The entire trajectory of the Wilders' lives would certainly have been different, and so would have American literature and pop culture. There wouldn't have been a TV show, numerous prairie festivals, etc. Just something to think about...

[Prairie Rose]

I just finished reading Young Pioneers, which was originally published under the title Let the Hurricane Roar. They changed the title well after RWL passed, but I wonder why the title became Young Pioneers. It seems a bit too close to Willa Cathers' O Pioneers. Anyway, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything LIW didn't do better.

Edited March 3, 2022 by Prairie Rose

[chediavolo]

I’m confused by this book forum, the titles don’t really necessarily explain which book goes where. I’d like to comment on the latest book by Melissa Gilbert and the one by Karen Grassle. Does anyone know which sub forum they are in? Thanks