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<p>Charles was actually an accomplished carpenter. That was quite a seasonal job, however. Nowadays, he would always find work here in Dallas.</p>
<p>The pie Ma made which Pa mistook for an apple pie was a pie made from green pumpkin.</p>
<p>I remember one summer meal Ma made which sounded tasty: cottage cheese balls with onion.</p>
<p>Loved the Little House books growing up, but Anne of Green Gables was my favorite series. If you haven’t picked up the last one, Rilla of Ingleside, it is quite wonderful and not really a children’s book at all. It takes place during World War I and brings the story of the homefront to very vivid life. This book contains the story of Dog Monday, which is one of my favorite, literary episodes ever.</p>
<p>Read the entire series aloud to my daughter at bedtime, somewhere between 2nd and 4th grade. We both loved it. We were both totally exasperated with some of the major decisions for the family as made by Pa. Some of their difficult moves and starting all over were not from economic necessity (at least as viewed and explained by Laura) but because Pa wanted a change.</p>
<p>Snowdog–I agree that it was often Pa’s decision, but, for instance, they were forced out of the home he built in what turned out to be Indian Territory. I applauded Ma for finally putting her foot down in SD. Had they not kept moving west, Laura never would have met Almonzo.</p>
<p>I didn’t see Pa as being a failure as a farmer. All of my uncles were farmers and it is incredibly hard work loaded with risks. Weren’t his crops ruined by locusts at one point? Sometimes it’s the weather or some other chancy thing that destroys everything right before harvest. In Pa’s day, they had to clear the land and work the soil with really primitive equipment. His job was even harder because they had no sons, though Laura helped.</p>
<p>Loved, loved, loved the LH books! I read them to my children several times over the years. My kids loved to play dress up and my girls did enjoy playing ‘prairie’. </p>
<p>I am teaching a lit class to junior high boys and we just finished reading My Side of the Mountain. Loved that book when I read it to my kids and got to enjoy it again with my class. The boys all thought that the book was highly believable but the adult in me finds it highly improbable. :-)</p>
<p>^^^^^Snowdog, still reading the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and it appears that most of the time they moved, it was indeed due to economic necessity. For various reasons, Pa could not make it successfully as a farmer (two years in a row of horrific grasshopper infestation wasn’t his fault), so there was always the hope that going west would solve the problems. Not so, obviously. The Little House books always mentioned Pa and Ma “talking softly” once the kids had gone to bed. I think they always tried to sugarcoat things to the girls so they wouldn’t worry. To Laura, they were always moving because Pa didn’t like the wave of settlers encroaching into their world, but often it was because they were broke and had no prospects of further success where they were. Though I do think Pa had a “grass is greener” philosophy rather than realizing that farming just wasn’t going to be his thing.</p>
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<p>Coincidentally, I just reread The Sherwood Ring, and it is sitting on my coffee table right now. 
Loved The Witch of Blackbird Pond.</p>
<p>I recall a Nancy Drew that had to do with spinning silk from spiders, which may be the one with the dress.</p>
<p>I love Ann of Green Gables and its sequels. I thought that the tv series–which also featured Colleen Dewhurst as Marilla and Richard Farnsworth as Matthew, in absolutely perfect casting–was excellent.</p>
<p>Love the Noel Streatfeild Shoe books, too.</p>
<p>Other particular favorites included Journey for a Princess by Margaret Leighton.</p>
<p>Loved Edward Eager–some of his books were actually set in my hometown, New Canaan–and E. Nesbit.</p>
<p>I read tons of horse books. I particularly liked Dorothy Lyon and Walter Farley.</p>
<p>Great discussion here. It prompted me to look up information on Rose Wilder Lane, who lived in Danbury. There is a fascinating article by Chris Woodside in Connecticut Explored, Fall 2010 that will give an insight into a complicated mother/daughter relationship.</p>
<p>I did a little online research and this time I found the Nancy Drew book with the gossamer dresses. It is “Secret in the Old Attic”.</p>
<p>Does anyone remember a book called, I think, “The Children of Greenough”?</p>
<p>i just remembered “Champion Dog Prince Tom”. Loved that book.</p>
<p>Here’s the article about Mary not going blind from scarlet fever</p>
<p>[Scarlet</a> Fever Probably Didn’t Blind Mary Ingalls - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/scarlet-fever-probably-didnt-blind-mary-ingalls/]Scarlet”>Scarlet Fever Probably Didn't Blind Mary Ingalls - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Another series that my oldest particulary loved was Redwall. She dressed up as Matthais at least oneyr for Halloween & we also went to several book signings with Brian Jacques.
( he wrote 22 books altogether, I expect she only read about 13, before she aged out)
Other series books that she especially liked, Bad News Ballet, Dealing with Dragons, & Catwings by Ursula Le guin. Kittens with wings, seriously, how cute is that?</p>
<p>When she was reading the Little House on the Prarie books she often dressed in a long dress & pinafore, work boots & braids. H accompanied the class on their overnight to Pioneer farms ( she was 6 & I carefully packed her things for the several nights stay)But when she came back, she still had the same dress on that she left with, "because thats what the pioneers would have done. " 
But straw everywhere.</p>
<p>The thing that stayed with me the most about the Little House books was how absolutely thrilled those girls were to receive gifts that my kids wouldn’t have considered special at all. An orange or a penny or a corncob made into a doll. It’s amazing to think of how few material things they owned.</p>
<p>I loved the early Anne of Green Gables books, not so much the later ones when she was an adult having marital problems (didn’t she suspect that Gilbert was cheating?).</p>
<p>I was obsessed with horses (now they say that can be a sign of Asperger’s Syndrome in girls) as a kid and read everything I could about them. Misty of Chincoteague, of course, and everything else that Marguerite Henry wrote. The Black Stallion and its many sequels. I also loved Lad, a Dog and the other collie books by that author. My kids never got into the animal books. We were reading The Hobbit together when they were pretty young, and then of course Harry Potter came along.</p>
<p>The thing that stayed with me the most about the Little House books was how absolutely thrilled those girls were to receive gifts that my kids wouldn’t have considered special at all. An orange or a penny or a corncob made into a doll. It’s amazing to think of how few material things they owned.</p>
<p>That struck me as well, but then I felt like I was a bad kid, cause I wasn’t entertained by making paper dolls. I also envied them for getting to spend so much time outside.
:(</p>
<p>My elementary school was across from a stable where I ( too rarely) went riding, & H & I live close to Woodland Park Zoo and both my kids volunteered there with the ponies year round, for many years beginning when they were 12/14, & went to / worked at horse camp during the summer. Unlike some of their friends we didnt have money to board a horse but we were able to patch together lots of horsey experiences, the remnants of which would send our black lab into ecstasy when she would get a whiff! :D</p>
<p>I think D1’s favorite horse series started with Throughbred - a Horse called Wonder.
Since she started reading when she was three, she went through a lot of series books, although it was a challenge to find books that would engage her vocabulary, but with subject matter that was still appropriate. Other favorite series was Ghostwriter, Wishbone,Choose your own Adventure…( we still have many of them in paperback, but I have been donating them to local families to slowly weed them out while someone else can still get use out of them. Some of the paper isn’t holding up well.)</p>
<p>Younger D was quite a bit older when she began reading on her own, Harry Potter was her first series in third grade when her teacher started reading it to the class after lunch. Then she took up Wren’s War.
How I envy my kids for having so many strong female characters in their books.
And for [Reading</a> Rainbow Remixed](<a href=“Reading Rainbow Remixed | In Your Imagination | PBS Digital Studios - YouTube”>Reading Rainbow Remixed | In Your Imagination | PBS Digital Studios - YouTube)</p>
<p>I have not read this thread but ran across this in other websearching today…some has a Twitter account and all the tweets are done in Laura Ingalls Wilder style, as if she were posting today…</p>
<p><a href=“https://twitter.com/halfpintingalls[/url]”>https://twitter.com/halfpintingalls</a></p>
<p>It is The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston. I loved that series as a child and even bought them later on. What biography of Laura are you reading, Nrsdb4? And thanks to all for all the new titles to look up. Rilla is definitely going on my list!</p>
<p>Onward, I am reading *Laura:The Life Of Laura Ingalls Wilder *by Donald Zochert.</p>
<p>The Orphan Train series is really interesting.</p>
<p>Thanks Onward! I’d love to read those again.</p>
<p>What a great thread. I am another who cannot overstate the importance of the Little House books in my life. I first read the entire series in second grade, and I read through the series (always in order) every year after that, at least four or five times. I grew up to become a children’s librarian, a children’s book editor, an author of children’s books, and now a reviewer of children’s books.</p>
<p>Because I read the Little House books so often, I think they had a developmental effect on my character as well as on my professional life. When I was in graduate school in library science, I went on a tour of the main Detroit Public Library. In their rare book room, I saw one of the manuscripts of one of the Little House books, On the Banks of Plum Creek, I think. It was written in longhand, in pencil, on a lined school tablet. Seeing it brought tears to my eyes and was just as important to me as seeing a Gutenberg Bible years later in Germany. </p>
<p>My grandmother and mother also loved the books, but my own D refused to have anything to do with them! I own first editions of two of the books, which were my grandmother’s.</p>
<p>I still think about those leeches in Plum Creek…</p>
<p>D no longer has much interest in the prarie foods she tried to prepare. Perhaps as a surprise, I might give her the LH cookbook. It might rekindle fond memories of a different time–when she read the books over the years and life back in LIW’s time. Will search for the cookbook. :)</p>