Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder published Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in her Little House series, in 1932.  She was 65 and the Great Depression was devastating the country and the Wilder family as well.  There was also the deaths of Laura's mother Caroline and sister Mary a few years back and so as a way to remember happier times Wilder began jotting down memories of her midwestern childhood in the 1870's.  Those memories, with the editorial help of her daughter Rose, would eventually become the Little House books.

The Ingalls family were farmers and homesteaders.  Homesteading has been described as a life of complete self sufficiency.  You built your own log cabin, built the furniture, hunted and grew the food you ate.  There were rare trips to town miles away where you would barter with wheat, eggs, animal skins in exchange for fabric and maybe some store bought sugar you reserved for company.  All through the spring, summer and fall you had to prepare for winter when the animals would be in hibernation, nothing would grow and your nearest neighbors were miles away::

"Now the potatoes and carrots, the beets and turnips and cabbages were gathered and stored in the cellar, for freezing nights had come.  Onions were made into long ropes, braided together by their tops, and then were hung in the attic beside wreaths of red peppers strung on threads.  The pumpkins and the squashes were piled in orange and yellow and green heaps in the attic's corners.  The barrels of salted fish were in the pantry, and yellow cheeses were stacked on the pantry shelves ...often the wind howled outside with a cold and lonesome sound.  But in the attic, Laura and Mary played house with the squashes and the pumpkins, and everything was snug and cozy".  

In the evenings Charles Ingalls would play his fiddle and tell stories to Mary and Laura about when he was a boy growing up in the Big Woods.  The stories could be funny like the time Charles and his brothers were forbidden to play on Sunday but  when their father fell asleep they snuck out and piled onto the new sled which halfway down the hill ran under a pig scooping it up onto the sled.  The brothers and the pig which was afraid and squealing loudly flew past their house with their father outside and not happy.  Other times Charles' stories could be harrowing.  The time his own father rode home from town later than he should have and encountered a panther:

Grandpa leaned forward in the saddle and urged the horse to run faster.  The horse was running as fast as it could possibly run, and still the panther screamed close behind.  Then Grandpa caught a glimpse of it, as it leaped from treetop to treetop, almost overhead.  It was a huge black panther, leaping through the air like Black Susan leaping on a mouse.  It was many many times bigger than Black Susan.  It was so big that if it leaped on grandpa it could kill him with it's enormous, slashing claws and its long sharp teeth ... the panther did not scream any more.  Grandpa did not see it anymore.  But he knew that it was coming, leaping after him in the dark woods behind him.  At last the horse ran up to Grandpa's house.  Grandpa saw the panther springing.  Grandpa jumped off the horse, against the door.  He burst through the door and slammed it behind him". 

Most of the book is not so harrowing.  We learn about Laura's getting a doll for Christmas, the first doll she had ever owned, which she named Charlotte.  Mary and Laura were close but Laura was a bit jealous of Mary who always did what she was told and had beautiful blonde hair which Lauta envied.  Charles and Caroline worked from dawn to dusk with Charles hunting and harvesting the wheat and Caroline cooking, churning and mending.  Everything had to be made by scratch including cheese which was quite a procedure and then tnere are the descriptions of maple candy which involves hot maple syrup poured over snow.  That recipe I think I could manage.

Sometimes when you read a children's book as an adult you can be disappointed. This is not one of those times.  Little House in the Big Woods is a fascinating wonderfully written look at what life was like for 19th century homesteading families like the Ingalls.  I understand that future books in the series get even better and that's saying alot since this first effort is so good. 

Little House in the Big Woods is book six on my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge list (choose a classic of children's literature) hosted by Karen K at Books and Chocolate.  I have six more classics to complete by the end of the year and I am getting a little nervous but I don't regret taking the challenge.  I am reading some wonderful books this year and without the challenge who knows when I would have gotten around to them.