Little House

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Chapter books are hard.

There aren’t as many pictures, and it takes so long to read them.  But for an obsessive reader like me, discovering the right chapter book for your little reader is the Holy Grail.  Finding a beautiful chapter book, one from your own childhood, is almost too good to be true.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I grabbed Little House in the Big Woods from my childhood bookshelf, shoved it into my suitcase, and smuggled it home for bedtime.  When I started reading it to Tessa and remembered just how foreign it is — Pa is always hunting, wolves are howling just outside the door, and Laura gets whipped for misbehaving on Sunday — I wasn’t sure what my little one would think.

She loves it.

Loves.It.

We zipped right through Little House in the Big Woods and have started Little House on the Prairie.  Thank you, Laura Ingalls Wilder, for writing a whole shelf full of books about your life, and thank you to every author who writes a long good series.  (I’m looking at you, J.K.)

Every once in a while Tessa pulls the blankets up over her head – is it really a wolf?  is Pa going to shoot it? — and I tend to replace “whipped” with “really yelled at” because we’re big on not hitting around here.  But mostly this book about long ago (after the dinosaurs and baby Jesus and our house being built, but before Old Pop was born) is fascinating and exciting and right on and timeless.