I grew up on Laura and her loving, pioneer family. In fact, this is one of the series that flipped the switch for me as a lifelong reader. The summer before my fifth grade year, I sat inside reading first this series and then began the Nancy Drew series (much to the consternation of my mother, I might add). I did, after all, grow up in the era when kids ran around outside from dawn until dusk without the over-scheduling eyes of a parent hovering inches away.

That's why when I introduced Little House in the Big Woods to my at risk students, it was not without a little trepidation. Would they connect to her? Would they love her as much as I did? Would her story of a time so long ago resonate with them?

I needn't have worried. My kids opened their arms and enveloped the Ingalls family as if they were one of them. They laughed when pa and his brothers unwittingly grabbed a wild pig on a sled, gasped in horror at the danger that was always within an arm's reach but so expertly kept at bay by Pa's steadiness, and scratched their heads at such simple, yet arguably one most work intensive time periods in our history. When at last the book was closed for good, many of my students began their campaign for the second book in the series to be read.

Thank you, Laura Ingalls Wilder, for your eternal stories of long ago that still ring true for us 140 years later. Now THAT is a book.

*Reread 10-24-2015
My students are looking for good historical fiction...