| Title | : | On the Banks of Plum Creek |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1773235478 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781773235479 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 216 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1937 |
| Awards | : | Newbery Medal (1938) |
On the Banks of Plum Creek Reviews
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Good grief, as an adult and as a parent, have I grown too practical to read and completely enjoy these books?
When Ma and Pa packed up the kiddos and left the Big Woods because there were too many people, less land and game to go around, I thought a little bit to myself, Um...Pa, did we think through this completely? Are you sure? Are we safe? But Pa is supposed to be an example of Great American Spirit. So, fine, we let this happen. There were some bumps in the road, but oh boy, we have some major battles for survival in Plum Creek. To the point where I wanted to grab Pa and yell, "Do you see? What can happen? With little research and no family to rely on, this new way of life you're trying out, riding high on the hog after that wheat crop comes through, can do to you? Because there's no wheat, Pa! Only grasshoppers. Listen to those freakin' Norwegians, will you? 'Grasshopper weather' isn't just some cutesy foreign term for, 'Gee, it's warm," it means that zillions of grasshoppers are going to take over the world!!!
"And by the way, Caroline, Pa doesn't always know what's best, so seriously do not let him leave when it might blizzard. Because then he might get caught in it. And be outside for FOUR DAYS with nothing to eat but the children's Christmas candy."
All that yelling aside, this is the reason (not Tolkien) that I want to live in a hill. With a charming creek outside. And I could skip around with my cow and my faithful dog Jack (and not my stick in the mud sister Mary) and hope my crazy, adventure-loving parents don't kill us all. Sorry, I'm yelling again.
Moments I loved: Christmas. Again. It just warms my heart when they have these sweet, simple holidays but are just so truly happy to be together (and alive, cough, Charles). They go to church for one Christmas, and see an actual Christmas tree, and Laura gets a fur cape and muff that blows away Nellie Oleson's.
Ma keeping the family together and strong while Charles is gone, making money to make up for their lost wheat, or when blizzards come through and he's missing. Oh, Ma, you're so tough.
And Pa, when he says to Laura, "We must do the best we can, Laura, and not grumble. What must be done is best done cheerfully." Word, Pa. The next time somebody's bitchin' at me, I'm going to preach some Little House to them. -
This place should be called "Hell Hole", not "Plum Creek". Grasshoppers and blizzards. Another crappy decision by Pa.
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I’ve formed a strange and embarrassing new habit as I’ve made my way through this series.
I'll give you an example of this habit as demonstrated in my reading of Plum Creek. You see, little Laura has always been too rambunctious to sit still and learn to read. But, when Ma and Pa settle only two and a half miles from town, she and Mary must go to school. Laura finds that she is the only student in the whole school who cannot yet read, and the teacher gives her individual help whenever she has a free moment.
Still with me?
So, in this one sweet scene, “Laura is able to sound out C-A-T… cat!” Suddenly, she remembers [a lesson Pa taught her at home] and says, “P-A-T… pat!” It’s a lightbulb moment, and she goes on to read the entire first line of primer words for her surprised and delighted teacher.
And at the close of this triumphant scene, out of my mouth… with the rich, warm timbre of pride and joy, came the words, “Well, that’s great!”
Now, this particular phrase is something I’ve never - to my knowledge - said in response to, well... anything.
But I’ve been saying it so often, and with zero irony, at the many wholesome achievements the Ingalls family gets under its collective belt in this story.
Pa brings home a team of horses for Christmas: ��Well, that’s great!”
Ma’s vanity cakes are a hit with party guests from town: “Well, that’s great!”
The family members experience a devastating crop loss through no fault of their own, and they grieve it, but they also get right back up to try again: “Well…" (you can fill in the blank).
Reading this book, I feel akin to my honest-to-goodness 100 year old grandmother, Mary, who’s had every shred of cynicism beaten out of her by long, hard years of living. This woman quite literally has no energy left for listening to bad news, so she only tunes in when there’s a righteous shred of glory at which to rejoice.
In summary, this series is turning me into my tired, happy grandma, Mary.
And all I can think to say about it is, “Well, that’s great!”
(Mary Morgan, at her 100th birthday celebration last April)
Book/Song Pairing: O-o-h Child (Nina Simone) -
The Ingalls Family versus the World
Laura and her family drove their covered wagon all the way to Minnesota to begin life anew.
Their new house? Built into a bank, with mud walls and a grass roof. A dugout. Ma is not pleased (especially when a cow manages to go through the roof!) but the girls found little ways to be delighted.
There's a little creek full of fish and crayfish. There's school - full of new people and learning. And there's family - all together and happy.
Except, the crops are ruined . And will stay ruined. Winter is right around the corner and they hardly have anything to eat. Ma, Pa and the girls need money so they can survive. And so, Pa does what he thinks is best and walks 300 miles to find work.
Will he be home in time for Christmas?
Will he come home at all?
As always, the book is beautifully written and stunningly heartfelt.
Audiobook Comments
Read by Cherry Jones and accompanied by Paul Woodiel on the fiddle. Love this audio series SO freaking much.
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This one seemed to be the most serious so far in the series. Things were not always happy and easy, by any means, but the family always made the most of their circumstances and survived. I'm anxious to read on and find out what happens next!
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On The Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Another absolutely delightful book, I am completely enjoying rereading the series. -
I was visiting relatives in Minnesota recently and was hit with a wave of nostalgia when I saw a sign for the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Walnut Grove. Somewhere in my mother's photo collection there is a picture of 8-year-old me, crouching by the grassy mound that was once the dugout home of Laura Ingalls and her family in the 1870s. Laura's stories from that period are told in the book, "On the Banks of Plum Creek." Coincidentally, Laura was also about 8 in the book.
I loved the Little House books when I was a kid, and last summer I reread the first three in the series. If you were a fan of the TV show "Little House on the Prairie," several of the town characters are first introduced in the "Plum Creek" book, including mean Nellie Oleson. (Nellie in the book is just as awful as she was on the TV show -- she is always sneering at little Laura and making fun of her "country" ways. What a brat.)
These stories have held up well over time and are still excellent children's books, with one caveat about the blatant racism toward Indians in book 2, the one named "Little House on the Prairie." In that book, the family had moved to Kansas and knowingly settled in what was still Indian Territory (a foolish move, but there's no point arguing about it nearly 150 years later). After some tense situations with local tribes, the family leaves Kansas and heads back to Minnesota, where the story picks up in "Plum Creek." First the family lives in a dugout home, and then Pa builds a sturdy wooden house.
Thankfully there were no racist comments in "Plum Creek," just some good stories about homesteading in Minnesota, including a grasshopper plague that ruined the Ingalls' crops for several years, some intense and scary blizzards, and a prairie fire. Man, pioneering was rough!
Like the other Ingalls books, there are also some charming stories of happy Christmases, helpful neighbors, and their loyal dog, Jack. I enjoyed "Plum Creek" so much that I plan to continue rereading the series. And the next time I'm in Minnesota, I'm going to stop by that museum. -
This is book #4 in the series. It can be read on its own, but there is much to be gained by knowing what Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and baby Carrie have experienced. For instance, the first book has them in the dense forests of Wisconsin in the last quarter of the 19th century. A lot of their extended family live nearby. In Little House on the Prairie, they leave Wisconsin and journey alone into Missouri and, finally, Kansas.
In this volume, having left Kansas for Minnesota, they have traded their horses and wagon for a dugout home and acres of land on the banks of Plum Creek.
This is another kind of “wilderness.” Not one with bears roaming the dense forest or with Indians roaming the plains. Pa has (as all pioneers should have) an enormous skill set that allows him to dig wells, trap and skin game, plant crops and build barns and houses. As one season melds into the next we see all these skills being put to use. Ma’s skills are just as important and Mary and Laura are certainly expected to help with caring for the livestock, cleaning and taking care of the baby. Ma is always busy with cooking, preserving, mending, milking, churning, creating clothes and doing Pa’s chores as well when he is away.
Yet what comes through so clearly is that they have created a “home” and have a deep sense of “family.” And, most of all, it is a good life despite the snow storms, prairie fires, crop failures and marauding wild animals. Some refer to it as a simpler time, but it is clear that everyone is busy from morning to night and the opportunities for formal education are often too far away to be available. Church going and Sunday school augment the at home bible reading (one of the few books to travel with this family).
Our soon-to-be six year old had no trouble understanding that Laura loved her little rag doll (her only doll) and what its loss might mean. She also wanted to discuss how special the opportunity for candy at Christmas was and how one of the children they met was allowed to be “mean” and “selfish.”
From an adult’s point of view, the story moves along at a good pace and provides interesting details about what life on the rim of conventional civilization was like; what was important to these people; and, how Pa’s playing the fiddle at night could make a tough day infinitely better. -
So yes indeed, in Laura Ingalla Wilder’s fourth instalment of her Little House on the Prairie series, in her published in 1937 and 1938 Newbery Honour winning On the Shores of Plum Lake (where Laura and her older sister Mary appear to be around eight to ten years of age and the Ingalls family is trying to homestead near Walnut Grove, Minnesota) there are of course and naturally some encountered and in fact be expected time and place oriented and based instances of ethnic stereotyping (a number of by bien sûr and none other than Caroline Ingalls rude and snide remarks regarding Native Americans, and that even though Ma Ingalls does seem to appreciate her Norwegian American neighbours and how much they are willing to lend a helping hand, she still often appears to act as though English speaking Americans are supposed to somehow be a bit culturally and linguistically superior).
However, for the most part, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s presented text is simply, delightfully and enlighteningly a story of 19th century pioneer life on the Minnesota prairie, of its joys but also and in particular of its potential hardships, how in On the Shores of Plum Lake, Laura Ingalls and her family strive to become successful farmers but are constantly facing and needing to deal with rather major weather and insect related set-backs such as for example a devastating and all encompassing grasshopper infestation (and how due to this, the father, how Charles Ingalls actually has to and in fact leave his family alone on their homestead for many months to make enough money working elsewhere as a hired hand in order to make ends meet after the grasshoppers, after the swarming locusts have totally decimated the prairie landscape, including the family’s hoped for wheat crop).
A wonderful and very much realistic and authentic feeling slice of 19th century American pioneer life is On the Banks of Plum Creek (and in my humble opinion and unlike so many of the older Newbery Award and Newbery Honour books still both in current print and also still very much readable, relatable and approachable for today’s children), and indeed, a solidly glowing four star reading experience for me, with the fact that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s narrative never once tries to make her childhood self appear as angelic and beyond reproach being really and truly very much personally appreciated (although I do still sometimes rather wonder if Wilder might be trying to make her older sister Mary appear at times as rather too much of a proverbial frustrating and annoying Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes in On the Banks of Plum Creek). -
Read it again, but alas, my kids are getting too old for it. They complain it's lame and "cringe". Sigh. Gone are the days they loved the same stories as me. Camping is coming up. I'll have to find something more exciting to read to them.
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Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder is an exquisite set of books that I cherished growing up. Read until they were dog-eared, this series has to be one of my childhood favorites. A story about a young girl growing up on the frontier, it was so popular they made it into a T.V. series even though the series didn't do it justice. Stories as a young girl I could relate to, the mean girl in town, fights with my sisters, and just the struggles of everyday life of any family. The love Ma and Pa had for each other showed through so much so, that even today I can still see Caroline's eye's sparkling bright blue as Pa whirled her around the dance floor. This series is a perfect example of a story well told. When you're there in Laura's life so much that you can feel her fear when in trouble, or you can taste the penny candy on Christmas, that's a story. I have no doubt this will be a children's classic for years to come. I highly recommend it.
Note: Reading again with my son, what a joy to see him loving these too! We've even started watching the tv series along with the reading!
ClassicsDefined.com -
This was rather underwhelming for me, especially in comparison to the previous books in this series. It didn't have the same vibe and magical feel, but still, it was enjoyable to continue reading about the characters, and their notable changes. I must say, Pa is rather frustrating, doing things on a whim, with barely no structure or planning ahead.
I do enjoy the Christmasses within these books, though. They are so warm and simple, and it makes me feel like lighting the fire, and getting under a blanket or two. The moments are captured perfectly. -
Decided to re-read this preparatory to visiting Walnut Grove!
When I was 7 or 8 this was my favorite of the series and all I remembered about it was the creek and the school and Laura's rivalry with Nellie Oleson. Which is quite remarkable because that is only a couple of chapters, and the rest of the book - the BULK of the book - is the battle against poverty, drought, and mainly, GRASSHOPPERS. The descriptions of the grasshopper swarms are absolutely CHILLING. I literally had goosebumps every time they turned up, for pages upon pages. No offense,
Andrew Smith, but I found these three trillion (an actual estimate) grasshoppers, in a swarm 1800 miles long and 110 miles wide, about three trillion times creepier and more horrific than the maneaters in
Grasshopper Jungle, which made me go "ha" and "ew" a lot but didn't give me CHILLS. Truth is, actually, a LOT stranger than fiction.
As phenomenal as the story of the swarm is, what's even more chilling is that 25 years later the Rocky Mountain Locust was extinct. The last one was spotted in Canada in 1902. Scientists are still baffled as to what actually killed them. Probably it was us, changing the land. More here:
http://www.historynet.com/1874-the-ye... -
Listened with the family to the great Cherry Jones read this on cd and it is really (again) so surprisingly good. Listening in the car from Davenport, Iowa back to Chicago to finish it, I can't recall stretches of road (gulp). What I recall is Pa telling his story of snow blindness and falling into a ditch in a blizzard and sleeping in a bearskin coat for a couple days under six feet of snow and then, when the storm clears, seeing he was very close to his Plum Banks home and trudging in. Makes RV camping as a way of engaging with the wilderness look a little tame, let's say.
Some great and memorable scenes: the leeches dance, the terrifying swarm of grasshoppers, the incredibly intense blizzard, followed by one of those sweet Wilder Christmases with almost nothing to share but oyster stew and no presents but Pa's guitar music and his blizzard survival story.
This is great autobiographical fiction, memoir, really, and a history of 1870's plains life for one (white!) family, a family facing nature as frightening as any Chthulu monster with some grace and music and game-playing and storytelling. A sweet, lyrical and evocative tale worth the name of classic. A great family story for a family to read or listen to. I am serious! -
This series was a staple of my childhood! It was a pure delight revisiting Plum Creek for a reading challenge this spring (2018). Truly, I now want to revisit each book in the series, from beginning to end. Such grand adventures Laura had! I hope my future children (if God so blesses me) will adore this book (and the rest) as much as I.
I was not compensated for my honest review. -
I’m still completely engrossed in this series. For the first time in Laura’s story (not including Farmer Boy since it revolved around Almanzo instead), the show begins to deviate from the books that inspired them. Some of the characters in the book, while still present, differed greatly from their counterparts I have come to know through the show. There was one change I’m incredibly glad that the show made, and that was the substitution of hail for the plague of grasshoppers that hits the Ingalls farm in the book. Those grasshoppers were disturbing and stomach-turning to read about, and I’m incredibly grateful that I didn’t have to see them on the show. However, that plague was morbidly interested to read about, and I couldn’t put the book down because I needed to know what happened and how the family bounced back. While I’ve enjoyed reading about Laura’s life, I’m becoming more and more thankful with every book read that I don’t live during the pioneer age. Their lives were insanely rough, and there was never an end to the hard work required to just continue squeaking by. I’ll take air conditioning and supermarkets over prairie life any day!
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The Ingalls family has come to Minnesota after leaving Indian country when they learned that they had been given false information about being allowed to settle there--this chronology is a big fictionalized, since IRL they returned back to where they came from for a time before heading to Minnesota, but the basics of all of this are from their real lives.
They start off living in a dugout that Pa trades for, near a creek, where Mary and Laura go to a school and an actual church for the first time; this is the book where we meet the colourful mean girl, Nellie Oleson (a composite character based on at least two girls Laura knew growing up) and the family has new, unexpected challenges.
This is one of my favourite books in this series, and I enjoyed rereading it. It's also the first time I've read it silently without one of my daughters either by my side or lying in bed a bedtime. -
This was always one of my favorites of the Little House series, perhaps because there is much to correlate with the TV series and its beginning. I loved watching it as a child in the 70's and forward.
Cherry Jones continues to do a stellar job in narrating this beloved series of books. -
This was my favorite book of the series when I was little, and I read it multiple times. I think I liked it because it had more of a story arc than the previous books. A lot of the book I did not remember, however. I missed that the settlement was full of Norwegian immigrants, probably because I couldn’t read the word Norwegian at the time. Ha! The book introduces the bratty, snobbish Nellie Oleson, who must’ve been equally fluent in Norwegian and English. (Isn’t -son Swedish and -sen Norwegian? I’m doubting if the name was spelled right in the book.)
The book begins with the family settling by Plum Creek near the town of Walnut Grove in southwestern Minnesota. (It glosses over the fact that their Kansas home in the previous book was not a legal settlement.) It covers nearly three years, where Laura is about age 7-10.
The book describes the
Locust Plague of 1874. The description was really eerie and icky. It never impressed me much as a kid, but this time it was vivid and creepy.
Millions and millions of grasshoppers were eating now. You could hear the millions of jaws biting and chewing. … Grasshoppers were still falling from the sky. The light was still dim because grasshoppers covered the sun. … Their clothes were full of grasshoppers. Some jumped onto the hot stove where Mary was starting supper. Ma covered the food till they had chased and smashed every grasshopper. She swept them up and shoveled them into the stove.
This book taught me that pink goes with brown hair and blue goes with blonde hair. I had to look up “boughten” when the book described the house being built with “boughten shingles” and “boughten doors” and “boughten windows.” I think it just means store-bought or manufactured. And it was my first lesson in leeches.
Now that I’ve been studying the violin, I’m more impressed with Pa’s fiddle playing. He must’ve made his own rosin. How did he replace the strings? I can’t imagine making your own strings. And he had to tune by ear, so unless he had a tuning fork, he’d need perfect pitch. Fiddling is often dismissed as just for hillbillies, but it’s actually complex. It usually involves bowing two strings at once — not easy — AND often strumming a third string with a finger. That requires mad skillz.
I have mixed feelings about the audio narration by Cherry Jones. She does a good job and always sings the tunes so you can hear the melody (if it’s known). I’m just not a big fan of the timbre of her voice, I think.
Language: Clean
Sexual Content: None
Violence/Gore: Descriptions of bugs and leeches are pretty gross
Harm to Animals:
Harm to Children:
Other (Triggers): -
I loved the descriptions of life along the creek bank in Minnesota, but now see the privation and days of starvation shining through Laura's eyes. Nellie Oleson is as mean as ever. Continuing to reread the series.
This was my favorite volume of the series in my own childhood, and the first that I read and read many times over, and yet I had blocked out that bit about Laura falling in the creek.
I am struck by the cultural value in the settler class of not being "beholden", even for a penny pencil, and how a specific set of manners functioned as a social marker of "worthiness". The tale of poor Charlotte the Rag Doll exemplifies this. Would Mr. Nelson have done the life-saving woodchopping for Ma and the girls if Laura had not been made to have good manners? And yet they are living badly on brutally conquered and cleared land - cleared by railroad capitalists using them as a vanguard in a different war of conquest. There is a jumble of threads here leading directly to our present political situation - I am thinking of the ideas in
Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland by
Jonathan M. Metzl and how the tangled roots go back to our unexamined origins.
As with the other volumes, the series is well worth adult reading. -
Once again, I enjoyed seeing this historical era through the eyes of someone who lived it. Who knew a square broom as opposed to a circular one would be seen as a luxury to get excited about? And I hadn't thought about tumbleweeds catching on fire and threatening homes as they continued to roll as wheels of fire. I've heard of grasshopper clouds dimming the sun but to have it and the destruction the insects caused described was both frightening and fascinating. And of course, in the midst of it all, the Ingalls family continued to learn, grow, and be their lovable selves. So, I enjoyed this story and look forward to the next book. :)
Content Advisory:
No language or sexual content.
Mary tells Laura she'll get "brown as an Indian" if she keeps running around without her bonnet on.
Mention of many squished grasshoppers feeling slimy under bare feet.
The process of cutting up a fish for dinner is described but without mention of blood.
There is the threat of poverty, hunger, and even fire over the course of the book, but it never gets too intense and the Ingalls keep a positive, proactive attitude through it all.
A little girl at school who does not play well with others yanks Laura to the ground by her braids when Laura suggets playing a game other than the one the little girl wants to play.
This little girl is unkind in other ways as well including not letting Laura touch her favorite dolls and saying something disrespectful to Ma. Laura sometimes gets so mad at this girl she wants to slap her, but doesn't because she was taught never to strike another person. She does at one point however, get revenge by setting the girl up to get chased by a hermit crab.
Laura disobeys Pa and Ma several times and experiences both natural consequences and fair punishment from her parents. Once, she even comes close to drowning with no one around to save her. (She is, of course, okay, but upset after finally getting out of the situation.) To her credit, though, she does learn her lessons and doesn't do the wrong things again. -
Eleanor and I are here to review the latest installment of the Little House series, so Eleanor, I'm going to move it to the "Read" shelf.
E: What color shelf is Gwen's?
Dad: Oh. It's not the color red. There are 3 shelves: read - meaning "I read it," currently reading, and I want to read it.
E: Oh. Maybe for the next book, we could sit on the computer bench and move the Silver Lake book to the "currently-reading" shelf.
D: Ummm... Ok. We can do that. Or, I could I could move it to the "currently-reading" shelf right after the review, and we could go down and read a chapter.
E: FOR REAL?!?! TODAY?!?!! *Gasps* FOR REAL? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me, daddy?
D: Nope.
E: OK! Lets do that!!! Um. Dad. We used to just do the review, then read it the next day. Do the review, read it the next day. But this time we're doing it differently. Cool, huh?
D: Yeah.
E: Can we tell now?
D: About the book?
E: Yeah.
D: Yeah, go ahead.
E: In chapter one they gave Pet and Patty and Bunny to another person. And in chapter two!!! Sorry. I'm getting excited. I'm starting to think about reading a new one.
D: Well go ahead.
E: They found a house in the dug-out.
D: What was that like?
E: That had a Hooooole at the end. Not a window. A hole. WHEW! THAT TICKLES!
D: What tickles?
E: I tickled my foot. *muttering* ...there's two kids and they had a dog for breakfast and the dog was yummy. the end...
D: Did you just say two kids had a dog for breakfast?
E: No. That was my fingers.
D: They're always goofing around during the reviews. Can we focus here please.
E: *Sigh* Yeah. You should write that part in the review.
D: I'll think about it.
E: Ok.
D: So, why do you like the Little House books so much?
E: Because Carrie is in it, and Carrie is a BABY.
D: But she won't be a baby forever.
E: Does it tell about Carrie growing up?
D: I'm sure it does. I guess we'll find out.
E: Like we find out about how
D: Yeah. Like that. (Eleanor is kind of excited about that part since )
E: Will
D: We'll have to see. Lets get back to talking about Plum Creek right now though.
E: I'm sitting criss-crossed.
D: What was your favorite part?
E: My FAVORITE part waaaaassssss.... whhhheeeeeeennnnnnnnn.... Carrie was like: (in a high pitched "baby" voice) "Ma! Ma! I want my breakfast."
We read "Grasshoppers Walking" when I had a tummy-ache.
D: What does that have to do with anything?
E: Cause Carrie's like... It sounds like she's crying it: "Ma! Ma! I want my breakfast!" You read it like that to make me feel better. Remember?
D: ...Well... I don't think I remember quite as much as you. Any other favorite parts?
E: When the grasshoppers were falling all over Laura and when they
D: That wasn't really a fun part though, was it? I mean, that was really bad for Laura and Pa, Ma, Mary, and Carrie, right?
E: BUT DAD! The person that reads the book. It's not really happening any more. We're just hearing about it. I wasn't crying during that part. I was just sitting on the floor, happy, smiling, listening.
D: Good point. Good point.
E: Why is it a good point?
D: It just is. Anything else?
E: Ummmm... Nnnn... (thinking) When... AHH! When it had "The Day of Games!"
D: Why did you like that?
E: BECAUSE! It had a lot of PLAYING in it.
D: Yeah. Do you think other people should read the book?
E: YES! YES! And I liked it when Laura and Carrie were drawing with their thimbles.
D: Me too. Can I tell them about the video?
E: Yeah.
D: We made a video of Eleanor saying all the chapters of On the Banks of Plum Creek. It's kindof long, but
we wanted to share it.
*EDIT* We forgot to put the stars... the MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE REVIEW!!!! (or so says, Eleanor...)
D: Eleanor, how many stars should we give it?
E: Fiiiiiiiivvvvvveeeeeee!!! Five--iiiive-iveive. Five-iiiive-iveive.
D: Got it. Really, I do. -
When I was a child, I related to Laura and Mary. Reading these as an adult is a whole new experience. I relate to Ma and Pa, and their fears and struggles. I cried listening to the audiobook this time around. CRIED!
Pa and Ma work so hard to establish themselves on the banks of Plum Creek, only to have their wheat field and garden demolished by grasshoppers. Those Norwegians knew what they were talking about when they called the summer "grasshopper weather." The struggle to simply exist and survive seems almost unimaginable compared to the modern luxuries I enjoy every day. I can't believe Pa almost died in a blizzard so close by to home. If I remember correctly from manuscripts, Ma was pregnant during all of this. What must she have been thinking, worrying her husband wasn't coming home? To be a widow with 4 children in those days would have been SO difficult.
In all the heartache, there are so many sweet moments too. I love the Town Party, Country Party stories. Nellie Oleson holds a special place amongst my book characters. Although I'm sure my perception of her is greatly influenced by the TV series I also loved as a kid. I love when Laura and Mary explore the Creek, and pick plums, and go to school. I love how they give up Christmas presents and treats to make sure that Pa can buy their Christmas horses. I love how the China shepherdess survives all of their moves across the country, and sits proudly on the mantel. I love how Laura gets a fur muff and cape, even BETTER than Nellie's.
This book is full of so much heartache and joy. It made me equally parts happy and sad. I will forever read and re-read this series. I can't wait until my children are old enough to love them too. -
I loved reading this book while camping. I wasn't exactly in a prairie, but it was great to read this outside lost in the nature. This book was so sweet and charming, and its simplicity was refreshing after some other heavier books I was reading. I loved following Laura and Mary around their underground house, picking up plums and playing in the creek. I loved feeling happy for them when they made a button garland for Carrie's Christmas, or when they got a new cow. And I could sympathize and feel bad for them when their crop was destroyed by grasshopers, and Pa had to leave for many months to find work. It was such an easy, lovely book to follow and I put it down with a happy sigh of contentment when I finished. Classics like that are not to be missed; there is a special feel to the Little House books that is unique to them, and everyone should experience it.
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So fun to listen to this with the boys! 😍 They were so sad when it ended!
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Even better than the last book 😁
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অন্য আর তিনটা বইয়ের মতো এটাও উপভোগ্য ছিল। মন ভরে উপভোগ করার মতো কিশোর উপন্যাস সিরিজ।
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It turns out Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote two horror novels and this is the one that's not The Long Winter. Not on the first read, but every subsequent read thereafter, a kind of spine-tingling dread appears every time someone mentions "grasshopper weather" and how hot the weather is, how great the wheat crops are going to be, because unlike the characters, the reader knows what's coming. I just about screamed at Pa's profligate spending on credit and kept waiting for Ma to put her foot down, but it seems I've gotten my canon mixed up: it's not Caroline Ingalls who does this (aside from a Demure Obedient Christian Wife passive-aggressiveness in not getting a new dress), but rather Laura Wilder, in the Rose series, who kicks up a fuss.
Treating all these as pure fiction, which the MacBride-written books almost certainly were to an even larger extent than the Little House series, I would love to draw a direct line between the two generations as to why Laura wouldn't allow Almanzo to buy her a fancy new stove - because the Laura in those books remembered the crushing debt her family lived under in these ones. *insert 'I've connected the two dots' 'You didn't connect shit' meme*
Honestly, despite these books holding a very specific nostalgic place in my readerheart, I've never thought of the prose as anything special, but good rabbit gravy the 'yell at the protagonists in a horror movie to get out of the basement' suspense at the still, hot summers before the plague of locusts... it's good stuff. And of course I still wish I lived in a little hobbit hole dugout. This seems important to mention somehow.
Odds and ends:
Audiobook: 6h25m, unabridged, read by Cherry Jones. -
If we disregard racist parts (but they do paint a picture of the time the book was written. with proper explanation of the context to the children, this could be a great lesson book about prejudice), this was a really fun read. I feel that, as more the family goes west, the harder their life is and the nature is more dangerous and unpredictable. Since they live closer to the town, we get more interactions with other characters. The book made me appreciate all the amenities we take for granted. Not sure if I'll read the next book in the series, but I'm glad I met this family.
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Ha! I couldn't even tell you what the cover illustration was on this one (although I'm sure it was the above) as it has been gone for so very long.
A few years ago, my Book Club read
The Children's Blizzard, which talked about the settling of the Midwest by the mostly Scandinavian immigrants and how harsh the land was, and really unsuitable for homesteading. While at the time, I thought of
The Long Winterthis book illustrates the point as well. When they first arrive, Mr. Nelson is heading west and trades his dugout and land for their ponies and in a moment of shocking hubris, Pa wonders why he planted so few crops.
So many of the scenes in this book were familiar, and favorites - going to school (oh how I wanted a slate and a speller), the rushing river, the dugout itself (and I was surprised to discover I'd forgotten that they'd moved out of the dugout into a house, all bought on credit), Nellie's party and later comeuppance, and Charlotte.
I was also interested at how less Puritanical Ma and Pa were in this novel, how harsh the landscape was, and Pa's hiding his laughter when Laura told him they weren't jumping off the haystack, but rolling down the side.
A wonderful re-read.
