07 February 2013

Happy Birthday Laura Ingalls Wilder

Do you remember the first book you ever read?  How about the first author you ever fell in love with?  I'm not sure what the first book I ever read was, but it was probably something in the Bobsey Twins series.  The first author that I ever read all of their work, though, was Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I remember so well the first book I read.  I was not such a stickler for reading a series in order back then (I was only 6 or 7), but I remember finding Little House on the Prairie at our local library.  In the town that I grew up in, our library was in an old house where all of the walls had been turned into bookshelves and  the books were stashed away in various rooms.   I remember quite clearly my Dad taking me to the library on the day I first found Laura's books.  I was looking through the children's section and saw Little House on the Prairie   I pulled it from the shelf and immediately sat down on the floor to read it.  The next thing that I remember was my Dad's voice calling to me that it was time to go.  At any rate, after Little House on the Prairie  I looked for and found Little House in the Big Woods, and I was hooked!  The glimpse that Mrs. Wilder gave us into the life of a pioneer girl growing up, and later of a pioneer woman, was fascinating to me.  These books not only fostered a life long love of reading, but an equally ingrained love of historical fiction.  Although these books were probably not technically historical fiction, they seemed that way to me and ignited the love of reading about other times, places, and cultures that I still have today.  So I say...."Hats off to you, Mrs. Wilder.  May there be many more like you in the future!:"

2 comments:

  1. I loved these books, and they may be the first series I read in full, too. My copies were in tatters since I read them so often. I reread the later books (the ones about her engagement and married life) when I was a little older since they didn't speak to me as much when I was young.

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  2. I think a lot of us loved these books, Sarah. I still pull these out every once in a while, as well as my Anne of Green Gables books and the Five Little Peppers books.

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