Royal is stated to be thirteen, and Eliza Jane and Alice twelve and ten respectively, at the time when Almanzo is just prior to nine years old. Notably, the ages of the Wilder children do not appear to be accurate to their real ages in comparison to Almanzo. The novel includes stories of Almanzo's brother Royal and his sisters, Eliza Jane and Alice. Set around 1866, it describes in detail the endless chores involved in running the Wilder family farm and Almanzo's part in it. The book begins just before Wilder's ninth birthday and follows at least two harvest cycles. It is focused on the childhood of Laura's future husband, Almanzo Wilder, growing up on a farm in upstate New York in the 1860s. It is the sole book that does not focus on the childhood of Laura Ingalls. When Pa returns in the winter evenings, Laura and Mary beg him to play his fiddle, as he is too tired from farm work to play during the summertime.įarmer Boy, published in 1933, is the second of the Little House series. One day he notices a bee tree and returns from hunting early to get the wash tub and milk pail to collect the honey. When Pa goes into the woods to hunt, he usually comes home with a deer and smokes the meat for the coming winter.
Everyday housework is described in detail. The book also describes other farm work duties and events, such as the birth of a calf, and the availability of milk, butter and cheese, gardening, field work, and hunting and gathering. Laura remembered that sugaring off, and the dance that followed, for the rest of her life. The Ingalls family returns home with buckets of syrup, enough to last the year. The family and neighbors harvest sap and make maple syrup. Later that winter, the family goes to Grandma Ingalls’s and has a “sugaring off”. The cousins come for Christmas that year, and Laura receives a doll, which she names Charlotte.
Little House in the Big Woods describes the homesteading skills Laura observed and began to practice during her fifth year. For the sake of continuity, in Wilder's later book, Little House on the Prairie, Laura portrayed herself as between six and seven years of age. According to a letter from Wilder's daughter, Rose, to biographer William Anderson, the publisher had Laura change her age in the book because it seemed unrealistic for a three-year-old to have such specific memories. Although Laura turns five years old during the book, the author was actually only three years old during the real-life events documented in the novel. The family includes mother Caroline Lake Quiner Ingalls, father Charles Phillip Ingalls, eldest daughter Mary Amelia Ingalls, middle daughter (and protagonist) Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder, and youngest sister Carrie. The story of the first book in the series, Little House in the Big Woods, revolves around the life of the Ingalls family in their small home near Pepin, Wisconsin. Little House replica at the Little House Wayside, 2007 The eight Little House books published during the author's lifetime are public domain in countries where the term of copyright lasts 50 years or less after the death of the author. Some nonfiction books by Ingalls Wilder, and some by other writers, are sometimes called Little House books or Little House on the Prairie books.
#Little house on the prairie complete book set series#
In addition, simplified versions of the original series have been published for younger children in chapter and picture book form. It tells the story of the "lost little house" years. One story not written by Wilder is Old Town in the Green Groves by Cynthia Rylant. They provide fictionalized accounts of the lives of Wilder's great-grandmother Martha Morse Tucker, grandmother Charlotte Tucker Quiner, mother Caroline Ingalls, and daughter Rose Wilder Lane's childhood and teenage years, as well as Wilder's own missing years-those portions of her life not featured in her novels, including most of her adult life. Several book series and some single novels by other writers have been published for children, young adults and adult readers. Although her intentions are unknown, it is commonly considered part of the Little House series and is included in the 9-volume paperback box set Little House, Big Adventure (Harper Trophy, May 1994). The eighth book, These Happy Golden Years, featured Laura Ingalls at ages 15 to 18 and was originally published with one page at the end containing the note, "The end of the Little House books." The ninth and last novel written by Wilder, The First Four Years was published posthumously and unfinished in 1971. The original Little House books were a series of eight autobiographical children's novels written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published by Harper & Brothers from 1932 to 1943.