As the new town of De Smet grows, Laura works, studies hard and begins to be courted by a young homesteader
Growing up in town
After the hard winter, the little town of De Smet in Dakota Territory is bustling with new settlers, shops and social life. Laura Ingalls is fifteen and growing up fast. The family's great hope is to send Mary, who is blind, to a college for the blind in Iowa, and Laura takes a job sewing shirts in town to help earn the money. She also studies hard, because she has promised to become a teacher.
Who will enjoy it
Readers aged about eight to twelve, and families, who have followed the Little House series and enjoy stories of growing up on the frontier.
What you will get
A warm, lively chapter of the Little House story, full of town life, friendships, school rivalries and the first stirrings of romance.
Little Town on the Prairie Facts: Pages, Genre and Setting
Genre
Children’s Books · Frontier town · Growing up · School
Length
320 pages · ≈ 9 h
More about this book
This is the most sociable of the Little House books. There are parties, a Fourth of July celebration with lemonade and horse races, evening entertainments called literaries where the whole town performs. At school, an old rival, Nellie Oleson, reappears, and a new teacher treats Laura and her sister Carrie unfairly, leading to some memorable classroom drama.
Most important for many readers, Almanzo Wilder begins to walk Laura home, the first steps of a courtship that the next books will follow. Mary's departure for college is a quiet, moving moment in the family's life. Wilder's writing is as clear and vivid as ever, with lovely details of sewing, cooking and prairie weather, and Garth Williams's pictures add warmth. Some attitudes of the period appear, particularly in a minstrel-show scene that modern readers may want to discuss.
Cheerful and full of incident, it ends with Laura earning her teaching certificate. It leads into These Happy Golden Years. For readers who have grown up alongside Laura, it is a delight to watch her become a confident young woman. About 320 pages in the HarperTrophy paperback.
The Long Winter
By the Shores of Silver Lake
On the Banks of Plum Creek
These Happy Golden Years
Little House on the Prairie
Ramona Quimby, Age 8
Little House in the Big Woods
Smile
Sarah, Plain and Tall
The Berenstain Bears Go to School
The Kissing Hand
Heidi