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A review by mattie
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
I ADORED this series as a kid: like, I probably read the entire series dozens of times. It was my comfort reading. I spent a lot of my childhood wandering around on my own having a grand time pretending I was Laura Ingalls Wilder having adventures on the prairie.
So when I unearthed a copy of this in an old box of my books, I was looking forward to introducing it to my own kids — but I knew going into it that it was *not* going to stand up well now that I know about wild complex things (/sarcasm) like racism and manifest destiny. And hoo boy.
Predictably, my daydreamy 5-year-old, who enjoys wandering around pretending she’s Elsa or Harry Potter, adored it. Even the bits where you’re just reading a whole chapter of Laura watching Pa build a door. Unclear whether she adored my clumsy pauses to try to discuss why it might not be great to think of indigenous people as strange and scary savages whose land is up for the taking. “Othering” may be a bit much for a kindergarten topic. But I tried. …and also just skipped over some parts that were particularly offensive or complicated to explain. (I also went down some very cool Wikipedia rabbit holes on the Osage Nation, all kinds of stuff I would’ve LOVED to know about as a kid. Besides all the actual human atrocities and cultural genocide wrought by colonialism, it also just leaves our view of the world, of history, so much less rich and interesting.) (Boy that sounded pompous, but ykwim.)
I’m going to introduce the aforementioned 5yo to The Birchbark House, which I’ve heard is an excellent complement, bless Louise Erdrich. But it sounds like I’ll have to do a little editing there, too, if I don’t want to be on the 2am nightmare brigade.
Definitely seeking recommendations of other chapter books on the Native experience — we’ve read some picture books, but it’d be even better if she could be whisked away in the same kind of engrossing long form storytelling that always made this series so special.
So when I unearthed a copy of this in an old box of my books, I was looking forward to introducing it to my own kids — but I knew going into it that it was *not* going to stand up well now that I know about wild complex things (/sarcasm) like racism and manifest destiny. And hoo boy.
Predictably, my daydreamy 5-year-old, who enjoys wandering around pretending she’s Elsa or Harry Potter, adored it. Even the bits where you’re just reading a whole chapter of Laura watching Pa build a door. Unclear whether she adored my clumsy pauses to try to discuss why it might not be great to think of indigenous people as strange and scary savages whose land is up for the taking. “Othering” may be a bit much for a kindergarten topic. But I tried. …and also just skipped over some parts that were particularly offensive or complicated to explain. (I also went down some very cool Wikipedia rabbit holes on the Osage Nation, all kinds of stuff I would’ve LOVED to know about as a kid. Besides all the actual human atrocities and cultural genocide wrought by colonialism, it also just leaves our view of the world, of history, so much less rich and interesting.) (Boy that sounded pompous, but ykwim.)
I’m going to introduce the aforementioned 5yo to The Birchbark House, which I’ve heard is an excellent complement, bless Louise Erdrich. But it sounds like I’ll have to do a little editing there, too, if I don’t want to be on the 2am nightmare brigade.
Definitely seeking recommendations of other chapter books on the Native experience — we’ve read some picture books, but it’d be even better if she could be whisked away in the same kind of engrossing long form storytelling that always made this series so special.