Laura loved the idea. Books had been so important to her at that age. And she wanted modern children to know about pioneer life—what she called “the beginning of things.”
So Laura sharpened her pencils and started over. This time, instead of writing as I, she wrote about herself as the young girl Laura Ingalls. Her first book, Little House in the Big Woods, told about life in the log cabin where she was born.
Rose typed up the pages and acted as her mother’s editor. In a few months, a whole book landed on the desk of a children’s editor at Harper & Brothers in New York.
Getting a book published is hard for a first-time author at any time. It was especially hard in 1931 because America was in the middle of the Great Depression. Many people didn’t have enough money for clothes or food, much less books. Nonetheless, the editor liked Laura’s book so much that she had to publish it. It was “the book that no depression could stop,” she said later.
Little House in the Big Woods came out the next year, in 1932. Laura was sixty-five years old.
Chapter 10
The Little House Books
Reviews of Laura’s first book were glowing. Fan letters from young readers meant the most to Laura, though. One girl wrote, “I wish it would never come to [an] end for it was so good.”
Inspired, Laura started on a second book, called Farmer Boy. It told about Almanzo’s childhood on his family farm in upstate New York. When that was done, she started on a third book, then a fourth . . .
Each book after Farmer Boy covered an entire year in Laura’s life. The long journeys by covered wagon, the blizzards, grasshoppers, poverty, ruined crops: all these things came back to life in her books. As she wrote, Laura searched for exactly the right words to make scenes seem real. It was the same thing she’d done for Mary many years before.
Laura sent her handwritten pages to Rose for editing—but not right away. “After I would write something,” she said, “I would set it back for a month or so and let it cool.” When she read the pages again, Laura might make a few changes before sending it to her daughter.
Rose acted as her mother’s editor for all the books. She typed up the handwritten pages and returned them to Laura with tips for changes. Sometimes Rose rewrote parts herself. But she did a lot less of that as time went on and Laura became an expert writer.
Were Laura’s books fiction (made-up stories) or nonfiction (all facts)? In a way, they were both. They were based on things that happened in Laura’s life, and the characters and events were real. Yet she changed or omitted facts that didn’t fit well into the plots. For example, her age was raised in a couple of the books. The name of the Bouchie family was changed to Brewster. The Ingallses’ year in Iowa was never mentioned. Today the Little House books appear on the fiction shelf in libraries.
Laura became famous, yet her life at Rocky Ridge changed very little. Laura still did her farm chores, often in pioneer style. She churned her own butter, sewed, and canned food for the winter. But her mind often strayed to her books. Sometimes she awoke in the middle of the night with an idea. Then she’d slip out of bed and write for hours.
Laura’s eighth book, These Happy Golden Years, was completed in 1943. The ending is her marriage to Almanzo. It was a good place to stop the series. Laura had been writing for more than ten years. Now she was seventy-six years old.
Reviewers often pointed to the themes that streamed through the books: family love, courage, independence, and cheerfulness.
Five of the Little House books became Newbery Honor titles. In publishing, that is like being nominated for an Oscar.
In 1954, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award was created to honor children’s book authors and illustrators who create important books for children. The first winner was Laura herself.
After World War II, the US government sent Laura’s books to Japan and Germany, their former enemies. They thought the Ingallses represented America’s pioneer spirit. It amazed Laura to receive letters from fans overseas.
Laura’s books were also translated into Braille, a writing system for the blind. Her sister Mary had learned to read Braille at the Iowa College for the Blind. In her honor, Laura never accepted fees for these books.
When the series was already a best seller, Garth Williams drew new illustrations for the books. His lifelike drawings are the ones familiar to most readers today. In 1947, Garth traveled to Rocky Ridge himself and found the eighty-year-old author and Almanzo busy in their garden. Laura’s blue eyes still “sparkled with good humor,” Garth said. Almanzo was leaning heavily on his cane. He didn’t have long to live. Almanzo died in 1949, sixty-four years after marrying his spunky prairie sweetheart. He was ninety-two.
Laura continued to live quietly at Rocky Ridge—with a few adventures sprinkled in. At eighty-seven, she took her first airplane ride!
When she was twelve, Laura had marveled at the speed of a train—and now this! Since her birth in a log cabin, the world had made astonishing changes. Laura had witnessed the invention of telephones, electric lights, cars, airplanes, computers, and television. Her lifelong optimism about the future had been proved right.
Laura died at home at Rocky Ridge on February 10, 1957. She was ninety years old.
Rose lived for eleven more years. In 1974, the popular TV series Little House on the Prairie began airing. It was loosely based on the Ingallses’ real adventures.
Since Rose did not have children, her death ended the Charles Ingalls family line. Yet the Ingallses live on in the beloved Little House books.
Laura Ingalls Wilder is one of the world’s most famous and loved children’s authors. Today, eighty years after her first book was published, readers are still spellbound by the Ingallses’ journeys across rutted prairie trails in their covered wagon.
THE LITTLE HOUSE BOOKS BY LAURA INGALLS WILDER
LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS (1932)—LIFE IN PEPIN, WISCONSIN, WHERE LAURA WAS BORN
FARMER BOY (1933)—ALMANZO’S CHILDHOOD ON A FARM IN UPSTATE NEW YORK
LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE (1935)—LAURA’S LIFE IN INDIAN TERRITORY, KANSAS
ON THE BANKS OF PLUM CREEK (1937)—THE INGALLSES’ LIFE IN WALNUT GROVE, MINNESOTA, WHERE THEY START OUT IN A SOD HOUSE
BY THE SHORES OF SILVER LAKE (1939)—LIVING AT A RAILROAD CAMP IN DAKOTA TERRITORY AND GETTING A HOMESTEAD THERE
THE LONG WINTER (1940)—SUFFERING THROUGH A BITTER WINTER IN THE FIRST YEAR OF HOMESTEADING
LITTLE TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE (1941)—THE NEW TOWN OF DE SMET SPROUTS IN THE WIDE PRAIRIE OF DAKOTA TERRITORY
THESE HAPPY GOLDEN YEARS (1943)—LAURA’S TEENAGE YEARS IN DE SMET, WHEN SHE TEACHES AND COMES TO KNOW ALMANZO
* * *
TIMELINE OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER’S LIFE
1865-Laura’s sister Mary is born in Pepin, Wisconsin
1867-Laura Ingalls is born in Pepin, Wisconsin
1869-The Ingallses move to Indian Territory, Kansas
1870-Caroline Ingalls, “Carrie,” is born in Kansas
1871-The Ingallses return to the Big Woods of Wisconsin
1874-Lives in a dugout near Walnut Grove, Minnesota
1875-Charles Frederick Ingalls, “Freddy,” is born
1876-Laura’s brother, Freddy, dies at nine months old Laura moves with her family to Burr Oak, Iowa
1877-Grace Ingalls is born in Burr Oak
1879-Mary becomes blind after a fever
1880-The Ingallses begin homesteading in De Smet, Dakota Territory
1885-Almanzo Wilder and Laura Ingalls marry
1886-Rose Wilder born in De Smet
1894-The Wilders move to Mansfield, Missouri
1932-Little House in the Big Woods is published when Laura is sixty-five
1954-Laura awarded the first Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, for her eight-book Little House series
1957-Laura (age ninety) dies at her Rocky Ridge home in Mansfield
TIMELINE OF THE WORLD
1862-The Homestead Act is passed, which gives land to settlers if they farm and live on it for five years
1865-The Civil War ends
1867-The year Laura is born, the population of New York City is well over a million
1869-In May, the first transcontinental railroad is completed
1870-The Osage people are forced to leave their homeland on the plains and move to a reservation in Oklahoma
1876-Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
1878-The Great Dakota Boom begins
1889-Dakota Territory becomes the states of North Dakota and South Dakota
1908-Ford produces the first Model T cars, which make automobiles affordable for many more Americans
1917-The United States enters World War I
1937-The first television shows are broadcast
1941-The United States enters World War II after Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor on December 7
1957-The Soviet Union launches the first satellite into space
1960-John F. Kennedy is elected president
BIBLIOGRAPHY
*Anderson, William. Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
*Anderson, William. Laura Ingalls Wilder Country: The People and Places Behind Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Life and Books. New York: HarperPerennial, 1990.
*Berne, Emma Carlson. Laura Ingalls Wilder. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing Company, 2008.
*Giff, Patricia Reilly. Laura Ingalls Wilder: Growing Up in the Little House. New York: Viking Kestrel, 1987.
Hill, Pamela Smith. Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life. Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2007.
Zochert, Donald. Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1976.
*Books for young readers
Who Was Laura Ingalls Wilder? Page 3