Little Town on the Prairie

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Summary: I was wrong - THIS book is the best Little House book!
Review: (...) But this next book, Little Town on the Prairie, is outstanding. The Ingalls have a short winter this year and everything seems to go right. But like we all know, even though we are warm and fed, problems just seem to come along. Now that Laura is 14 and 15 years old, she learns to care about and appreciate other people besides just her immediate family. She likes Ida, Cap, Mary Power and Minnie. She goes to a fancy birthday party for a boy named Frank. We see that she is becoming a beautiful young lady and she starts describing clothes and hairstyles in detail.
She even buys the latest thing - name cards. And when she sees Almonzo,she says "I was just picking up my name cards". MY name cards. Like she was so totally in fashion forever. She is very smart and can do long division in her head. There are many fun social occasions in this book and some exciting power struggles with the teacher, Eliza Jane(Almonzo's sister), Nellie Oleson, etc. This is absolutely the most enjoyable book in the series. But I said that last time. Next will be "These Happy Golden Years". It can't be better than this one, but I've just got to see what happens! I can't close without again mentioning how much you learn in this book. This book teaches social history. You learn how to operate a corsett, hoop skirt, and what a lunatic fringe is, and how to curl your hair without a curling iron. You find out what to do when plagued by blackbirds and gophers, what to do when you're "home alone", and how to behave at your first paying job. This book is the beginning of the end of the little Ingalls family. Mary goes away to college, and soon Laura will become a teacher. We all have to face it sooner or later, our children will grow up. See how an ideal family handles it, with grace and love.

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Summary: The Best Little House Book
Review: Little Town on the Prairie is my favourite book out of all the "Little House" series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I enjoyed this book more than the other books because it was happier, for there were not so many depressing times the Ingalls family had to endure.
The title is self-explanatory, a little town on the prairie, which is in Dakota, USA. The story is set during the 1880's. The Ingalls family, consisting of six people, was always moving from place to place. When they came to Dakota, they were very happy with it. Their little "shanty" that they stayed in during the summer was built into a new, improved house. Mary, the oldest sister, is accepted into the college of the blind, and Laura continues school and has a summer job. Things are going very well at the Ingalls household. There is enough food for everyone, and there wasn't another hard winter, like everyone expected. Most problems have solutions like when there were gophers eating their corn, they got a cat to kill them. The only problem is school, because of the new teacher, Eliza Jane Wilder. She is Almanzo Wilder's sister. She turns out to be horribly mean to Laura and her younger sister, Carrie, because Nellie Oleson (Laura's enemy mentioned before in "The Banks of Plum Creek") told the teacher negative remarks about Laura. Soon, a new teacher replaces her. All of the problems work themselves out somehow, which is what I like about this book.
In my opinion, Laura Ingalls Wilder does an exquisite job captivating all her readers with her refined choice of words, meticulous detail, and up-beat plot. This is absolutely the best piece she's written. She does an admirable job of describing the setting so it makes you feel like you're right there, witnessing the whole scene. The book also has a good balance of good times and bad times, because if it was all bad times the book would seem depressing, and if it was all good times, the book would seem hard to believe. I would recommend this book for those who enjoy realistic fiction or historical fiction. I think a possible theme for this story would be hold on, things will get better. This theme is displayed throughout all the "Little House" series. This is my all time favourite book, and I hope you enjoy it, too.

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Summary: Definitely my favorite Little House book...
Review: Since I've first read this book when I was a little younger than Laura, so I was really excited to read what life was like 'back then' for kids my age.

The hard winter is finally over, and the Ingalls family finally moves out to their claim, where Laura enjoys the outside work and the sunshine. But then she is offered a job as a seamstress in town, and takes it even though she misses the outdoors. The work is hard, and the environment is unpleasant, but Laura sticks it out.

Ma=ry finally has a chance to go to the blind college in Iowa, and while Ma and Pa take her there, Laura, Carrie and Grace clean the house.

School finally begins again, and an unpleasant surprise comes along on the first day - Nellie Oleson from Plum Creek, who schemes and causes trouble. The high point of this situation is the troble between Laura and Ms. Wilder, the teacher, who only hears unpleasant things about Laura from Nellie, and Laura's short temper, especially where Carrie is concerned, does not help the situation... But Ida, the new girl, is nice enough to make up for Nellie's unpleasantness.

Laura is grown up enough to want fashionable cloths and all other fashionable things other girls her age in school have, such as name cards. She is invited to parties and attends her first evening sociable.

We start seeing the relationship between Laura and Almanzo Wilder start developing (even though I think her relationship with his sister, her unpleasant ex - school teacher, might give things an interesting twist).