Pioneer Days: The Works of Laura Ingalls Wilder

[Queena]

Aug 27, 2018 16:16:43 GMT -4 ladytrentham said:

I have just ordered A Wilder in the West from Amazon. I will report.

I'm going to try to find it at the library. I tried reading the biography on both women but the way Rose treated her parents made me so upset.

[Deleted]

After reading Prairie Fires, I'm pretty sure that nowadays Rose would be diagnosed with a mental illness. She really came across as someone with bipolar--crazy highs where she'd spend extravagantly or rush off to Europe for a few years at the drop of a hat; then her lows where she struggled with deep depression.

[tabby]

There is a new PBS American Masters show about Laura Ingalls Wilder that will be broadcast on Twin Cities PBS (TPT) on December 29. I don't know if other PBS stations will have it then, but keep an eye out.

I just noticed in my program guide for the month that TPT will show an American Masters about Louisa May Alcott right after the LIW one. There's my evening sorted for December 29.

[kanding]

Thanks for this!

[wonkabar5]

I hope the LIW program features actor dramatizations as did the LMA biography. I wonder who would play Laura and others?

ETA: Tess Harper speaks, as does historian Carolyn Fraser, as well as guest appearances by Nellie, Half-Pint, and Manly.

[Ginger]

I have a newfound love of audiobooks. I dipped into Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee for a few hours, and found the recounting of battles to be a bit tedious. Based on the recommendation in this thread, I started on Prairie Fires. Caroline Fraser summarized all of the information I'd listened to in Bury My Heart in a much more engaging way, so I'm enjoying it. I just got to the part where a local in Walnut Grove attempts to buy Laura as an indentured servant. I didn't know Walnut Grove was such a sketchy town.

By coincidence, the other day I turned on a Little House rerun on the Hallmark Channel. In the episode a Native American tribal chief is ill and Ma and Pa Ingalls, along with Doc Baker, help him obtain treatment. Angry Walnut Grove townspeople, who were invented solely for the purpose of this episode, attempt to hunt the chief down and drag him out of town while Pa and Ma nobly protect him. For a lot of people, the Little House series is kind of merged in their minds with the books, but that episode definitely does not reflect how Pa and Ma behaved towards native people in the books.

[Deleted]

Long story, but I read Little House in the Big Woods to my primary age students a couple of years ago and they LOVED it. Both the girls and the boys They were mesmerized, even by the parts they had no background knowledge about, that I thought would bore them, like the sugaring party or Pa telling over the stories from when he was a boy. They were desperate for me to read Little House on the Prairie, and maybe I should have, but I just was too nervous to read it without all the historical context being explained, which I thought would be too heavy for little kids. (I chickened out, I guess, though a bunch of them did take out other books in the series to read on their own:)

But anyway, I thought it was fascinating how even though I needed to stop along the way to explain things here and there, they had no trouble with getting fully immersed in the story. It was like they were hypnotized for the 20 minutes or so we read every day. It didn't matter how old fashioned it was, it was fresh and exciting to them. Truly, the mark of a classic.

[Auroranorth]

Dec 7, 2020 10:58:56 GMT -4 Ladybug said:

Mar 13, 2005 12:45:42 GMT -4 Ginger said:

For a lot of people, the Little House series is kind of merged in their minds with the books, but that episode definitely does not reflect how Pa and Ma behaved towards native people in the books.

This is definitely true. I think these books now require a LOT of historical context to be understood now. I mainly blame Charles Ingalls for dragging his family into land he wasn't supposed to be on, but Ma refers to Native Americans as savages throughout the books.

I never watched the show, but I got the impression that accuracy to the books wasn't its long suit, to say the least.

Ma hated Native Americans, and while I don't recall Pa being rude about them, and he did admit they had reason to be angry, he was more than willing to take land from them for his own use, even though he knew the land hadn't been opened for settlement. And the later mentions of Native Americans in the books include the "half-breed" Big Jerry, who's at the least a gambler and possibly a horse thief, but is kind to the Ingalls, and the Indian who shows up out of the blue before the Long Winter hits and warns them about the coming storms. I think that's it (we do have an episode of blackface where Pa and his pals play minstrels and are referred to as "darkies" and the black doctor who helped the Ingalls during LHOTP is somewhat portrayed as Other but isn't actually slurred.)

“When white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on… That’s why we’re here, Laura. White people are going to settle all this country.”

[Ladybug]

I read the books with my kids and we did have to take breaks to talk about the history and problematic stuff. My kids were very focused on how the family had to make 99% of what they needed. The descriptions of Pa building their log house, all the food gathering and preparation, Ma sewing all their clothes by hand, etc. My daughter also read the American Girl Kaya stories, which are about a Nez Perce girl in the 18th c.

[Auroranorth]

I read the books back in the days of yore, and I did notice the racism, but it wouldn't have occurred to me to talk to anyone about it because eight year olds didn't do that. I think it's good that we now have the expectation that we will critically examine books that are problematic rather than just absorbing the attitudes or hurting others with them. I enjoy the series, but I'm also just fine with calling out its failures and racism.