Yet it was precisely because of these differences that I was eager to steal away every evening into Laura’s world of butter making and tree sapping, of deer slayings and fiddle dances. My urban, upper-middle class upbringing, with its emphasis on high culture and achievement, could not have been more different than Laura’s quiet, rural, community-based one. But Laura and I had more than just a century between us. I first encountered the Little House books as a child, growing up in one of the Upper East Side brownstones that had been built in the years of Laura’s own childhood.

Regardless of how you feel about her entrance into the “canon” (I, for one, am unabashedly happy about it), it is worth noting that it took 80 years for it to happen - 80 years in which generations of children read and reread her stories about the pleasures and struggles of life on the American prairie in the decades after the Civil War. For many of us, it is surprising that Wilder had not already held this company, while for others, the introduction of a writer of what has since been labeled “young adult literature” is a bit of a shock. Alongside these themes, will be activities that focus on handwork, art, language arts and nature studies.LAST YEAR the Library of America released the nine novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder in a two-volume set, placing her, for the first time, in the company of such great American writers as Thomas Paine, Herman Melville, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor. This Unit, inspired by the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder is a month-long adventure that will plunge you and your kids head-first into the Pioneer era and help you learn the long lost arts of homemaking, survival and building a strong family culture. This year as I have homeschooled, I have introduced an approach that brings together learning experiences based upon a common theme. As a busy mom of three I understand how challenging it is to teach to multiple age groups and learning styles. I am so thrilled to share the 10th selection in a series of Family Learning Literature Guides that I am creating. ― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. “Go to sleep, now.”īut Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods.

“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said.

“When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”

Little house in the big woods house