“June is bustin’ out all over!” It’s a month when lots of people do lots of traveling. Over the years Max and her author have enjoyed many road trips in June with family, and they have both spent quality time “in the country” on their grandparents’ farms. While Max’s grandfather’s farm is more modern than mine, both places hold treasured family memories.
For that reason and for this month’s journey, I’ll be focusing on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books and the impact they had on me as a child and their impact on Max and Her Stacks.
“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred.”—Laura Ingalls Wilder
I love this image from Max and Her Stacks! It reminds me of how the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series allowed me not only to travel back in time but also to explore life in Wisconsin, New York, Kansas, Minnesota, and the Dakota Territory.
Max admits she was gifted with a boxed set and read all the books before she finished third grade. As a slow reader in my early years, I did not read the books until fifth and sixth grade. Nonetheless, this series has impacted both Max and me and many others.
As I’ve been reading Max to area schools over the last several months, I have been pleased to learn that young kids today still know about Laura and her Little House stories. The new Netflix adaptation scheduled to premiere in July of this year proves these are stories well worth knowing.
According to The Laura Ingalls Wilder Companion by Annette Whipple, “Wilder included some tough subjects in her books because they portrayed her own experience as a pioneer. She wrote about how white settlers treated the American Indians—and it was often shameful. But there were good lessons too. Her childhood focuses on hard work, independence, and the importance of family. These topics, good and bad, are Wilder’s story, but they’re also America’s story—our history.”
Maybe it’s this history that attracts me to the Little House books. I can relate in so many ways.
While neither of my parents’ parents lived on the prairie, I felt I could still relate to Laura Ingalls Wilder when I visited family on their farms in rural Tennessee.
My maternal grandparents lived in a small house, originally a one-room log cabin. With cramped space serving as both sleeping and living quarters, this house required my tall brother-in-law to duck his head whenever he visited. When my sister and I visited in the summer as children, we slept on pallets on the floor by the wood stove with a chamber pot and an outhouse at our disposal.
I also remember visiting the community’s one-room schoolhouse where my mother’s younger sister attended school. My aunt and the other community children walked to and from this school until the latter half of the twentieth century.
From the chapter entitled “Summertime” in Little House in the Big Woods:
“Summer days were long, and [Pa] was tired after he had worked hard all day in the fields.
Ma was busy, too. Laura and Mary helped her weed the garden, and they helped her feed the calves and the hens. They gathered the eggs, and they helped make the cheese.”
This passage reminds me of everything my sister and I experienced on my own Ma and Pa’s farm. We helped milk the cows and goats, feed the chickens and pigs, groom the horses, churn butter, and pick vegetables from the garden. We rode the tractor with Pa and shucked corn with Ma.
Like Laura’s family, my farming relatives were people of faith. Whenever I visited my paternal grandmother on Sundays, our family went to the little Methodist church down the road from her house. My uncle led the singing, and an older gentleman always gave us chewing gum. The Sunday school teacher gave us little scripture cards to remind us of the lesson. We often attended summer revival meetings at my maternal grandparents’ foot-washing Baptist church. I can still hear my grandmother’s alto voice harmonizing with the congregation as she sang “Shall We Gather at the River.”
In A Prairie Girl’s Faith, author Stephen W. Hines speaks about the importance of Wilder’s Christian pilgrimage:
“Pioneer values of hope, endurance, courage, and religious conviction, shaped by our Lord and his teaching, have given us a vision of America that we should strive for. . . . Our forebears were not perfect examples of what Christians should look like; nevertheless, this woman and her beloved family give us a picture of a healthy, loving faith. And they can guide us all into the future as we grow in our faith.”
Like Laura, my faith and family background have been constant companions in my own spiritual travels.
A Prairie Devotional, written by Wendi Lou Lee who played Grace in the Little House TV series, might be a nice addition to family bedtime devotional studies. This book includes personal stories by the author, quotes from the TV series, scripture, and thought-provoking questions about faith and family.
“The road goes up hill and down, and it is rutted and stony, but every turn of the wheels changes our view of the woods and the hills.”—Laura Ingalls Wilder
“What is past is prologue.”—William Shakespeare
“I would rather walk with God in the dark than go alone in the light.”—Mary Gardiner Brainard
“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth.”—Isaiah 42:16
Philippians 1:3-5; Joshua 24:15; Proverbs 22:6; Deuteronomy 32:7
