I’m interested now, having grown up on the TV series. Would anyone recommend these books to a 40 year old woman? Or will I be mocked when I pick them up at the local library or nearest bookstore?
I think any one, of any age, would find these books fascinating. Indoor plumbing, a furnace, fresh food – you’ll appreciate these things as never before. Don’t cheat yourself. Read them!
Third or fourth or whatever the reading of them for adults. While ironically I would never recommend the TV series (which was made for the whole family but is a syrupy preachy blend of stock characters and trite moralistic plots [see ‘Quinn, Dr., Medicine Woman’]) the books which were written for children are a great portrait of real pioneer life. In many ways you learn much more about real pioneer life from these books than from history texts (would a history book tell you about a pig’s bladder balloon? or the stench of Indians to little white girls? or the belief in Santa Claus riding a donkey?).
I bought a set for my niece about ten years ago; when I learned that she’d received a set from her parents I started reading them again and was totally charmed. They’re intriguing on a very different level as an adult than they were when I read them in elementary school.
I remember two prominent encounters with Indians – one when Laura is a little girl, and is horrified by their smell. Then, in the last book The First Four Years (chronicling her marriage to Almanzo) a small group of Indians comes to her house and one asks Laura to leave with him. She slaps him and runs back inside.
I need to read those again. I went through most of them numerous times when I was younger and I vaguely remember my parents reading Little House in the Big Woods to me and my brothers when we were really young.
We used to have most of the books but I don’t know what’s become of them now. Over at Amazon the nine-book series is only forty bucks…
Do the new versions still have the account of Pa giving Laura (or was it Mary?) a pretty harsh spanking in one of the early books? And then there was the part in the book about Alonzo where the “big boys” in school were whipped with a horse whip :eek: I would actually be surprised if those tales are still in the books.
On a somewhat related note, I have an early edition of a Nancy Drew book with a black maid who speaks like she just stepped out of Gone With the Wind! That character was removed in later versions. My, how things change.
I’m 39, and have reread them about once a year since receiving the first book at age 10.
I recall when I was an undergraduate, I took a class in American social history, and the professor asked us about what did Pa do for a living – he was met with dead silence because none of the students wanted to admit they knew anything about those ‘kiddie books’! I answered, correctly, that he was a carpenter, and suddenly the dam broke, and everyone was talking about them, and various incidents from the books in relation to things we were discussing in class.
I’m still looking for a good biography – I have one, and I can’t remember the author, surname starts with a Z – he attempts to write in the same style as Laura, which grates after a while, and he’s got intensely researched information, but frustratingly with no references or footnotes!
I would also agree they make interesting reading for adults, but I’ll tell ya, reading them as a kid, I remember all the fun and exciting adventures that Laura had. Reading them as an adult, I’m so much more aware of the hardships faced by the family. It’s not … depressing, exactly, but it’s something I notice. As a child, I didn’t have enough perspective to realize just how hand-to-mouth the family was living much of the time. The series is both sobering and wonderful. When I was a kid, I wanted to be just like Laura. Now, I realize that I would last about two minutes in the Big Woods or on the Prairie before I had some sort of nervous breakdown. :eek:
–delphica, dweller in a Little Apartment in the Big City
My copies were illustrated by Garth Williams, who also illustrated The Rabbits’ Wedding, which apparently evoked much antimiscegenation furor because one rabbit was black and one was white. This did not affect me as a little girl; rather, I was somewhat confused about what had happened in Laura’s life vs the rabbits’ life.
Okay, this is gonna drive me nuts. Why would the balls of fire episode (I assume you’re referring to the incident where the chimney catches fire and a ball of fire rolls out of the fireplace and under Mary’s skirts) be deleted? I’ve been googling for an hour; maybe I’m just not using the right search terms. I found this (scroll to the bottom):
But that doesn’t tell me why innocuous scenes like the cheese-making or the chimney fire are being cut.
Color me bewildered. Color me irritated, too, because my daughter just turned six and is learning to read at a charming rate, and I’ve so been looking forward to introducing her to all the books I loved as a child. I don’t want to waste money on a chopped-up version of the Little House books.
That was in Little House. But there was also a scene in Plum Creek where tumbleweeds caught fire and kept rolling across the ground.
The thing is, though, I’m not sure whether to believe you guys that scenes have been cut. I can’t even imagine that there would be abridged editions of these books! There’s absolutely no reason to censor anything; Laura and her daughter did the censoring before she submitted the manuscripts! Are you absolutely sure that the scenes you’re remembering and not finding are not anywhere in current editions?
I’m sure glad my copies of the books are older. I bought them used, one at a time, because I wanted them in hardback.
So, I just checked my copies and the headcheese was made in the first chapter of Little House in the Big Woods. I was just one paragraph, but pretty graphic, with Ma boiling the head, scraping it, etc. It was page 17 in my hardback edition – shortly after the pig bladder part. Regular cheesemaking (with the slotted board) is in chapter “Summertime” – page 177, in my copy. This is the same chapter in which Laura is whipped with a strap, BTW (page 184), for slapping the Mary (who had been teasing Laura that her own – golden – hair was prettier than Laura’s brown hair).
Farmer Boy had the horse-whipping scene in the third chapter, with background on it in the first two chapters. The “slim, pale, young” teacher is taught by Almanzo’s father how to handle a horsewhip so he could keep five big thugs in line. These boys, BTW, were criminal 16 or 17 year old bullies and “everyone was afraid of them. …They boasted that no teacher could finish the winter term in that school, and no teacher ever had.” It is mentioned that one of the teachers they beat “died of it later.” If headcheese is mentioned in Farmer Boy, I believe it’s only in the context of eating it.
There are many indian scenes in Little House on the Prairie. The indians come to the house in the chapter “Indians in the House” Their “naked[ness]” and “wild[ness]” are mentioned several times and their bad smell is mentioned, too, and explained as coming from the skunk skins they wear as loincloths. Their faces are called “bold and fierce and terrible.” They take all Pa’s tobacco and eat “a lot” of cornbread. No pillow-slashing, though. More indians come later, in “The Tall Indian.” They are treated fairly respectfully in the text, other than having them say “How,” and such – not uncommon in a book written in the 1930s. One indian who comes speaks french, and Pa calls him “No common trash.” In the same chapter, more indians come – these are called “dirty and scowling and mean” – they take the tobacco again, and cornbread and almost take the furs Pa’s been collecting, but leave those behind at the last minute – presumably because their leaders have cautioned them against causing trouble. No pillow-slashing. In the chapter “Indian War-Cry,” the indians hold a conference for several nights and frighten the settlers with their war-cries but nothing comes of it – all the tribes but the Osage leave and Pa learns (from an indian he meets who speaks English) that a great Osage warior, Soldat du Chene, has convinced them not to make war. In the next chapter, the Osage leave. Laura is moved by the sight of their going. The Osage chief comes first, on his pony, “The pony’s nose and head were free; it wore no bridle. Not even one strap was on it anywhere. There was nothing to make it do anything it didn’t want to do. Willingly it came trotting along the old Indian trail as if it liked to carry the Indian on its back.” Laura calls the indian’s face, “a proud, still face. No matter what happened, it would always be like that.” The indians go by all day long. There is one point when Laura sees an indian baby and wants it, and asks Pa to get it for her. In the final chapter, soldiers come and tell the Ingalls that their land was opened for homesteading in error and they must leave.
It’s in The Long Winter that the house is buried in snow and Laura sees the horses hoofs go by, level with her second floor window. This is in chapter “Cold and Dark,” page 232 in my copy.
I love these books! I can’t imagine why they did some of this editing. The indian stuff makes a kind of sense (although I don’t agree with it) – the scene where Laura asks for the indian baby is pretty politically incorrect, among others – but why some of the other cuts?
Oh, and the “Z” biographer is Donald Zochert and he’s about as good as it gets – there are no real good scholarly biographies of Wilder.
I don’t know if there has been editing or not. I’m pretty sure the one book of the series that I own (Big Woods) was not edited. But I am glad to say my library has old copies of these books and so, when I read them to my son he’s getting the same books I got as a little kid.
The library is where it’s at for older editions. We just finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Oompah Loompahs were still black!
I’ll have to see whether we have new editions of Little House here at work and compare them to the ones I have.
I found out a couple years ago that there were some alterations in the Anne of Green Gables series as well. When American publishers picked up the series, they changed the name of one of the books from Anne of Windy Willows to Anne of Windy Poplars and deleted parts of the text dealing with Anne’s visit to Minerva Tomgallon–apparently, some of the death descriptions were considered too graphic for American children.
Emony Dax, “The Haunted Staircase”? It’s the second in the series. I have a whole bunch of the early editions too with the original blue covers and all - my mom was a big Nancy Drew fan.
I’ve never read the books but watched the TV show on reruns. Based on what I’ve read here, it seems that the TV show was very loosely based on the books. Are the main characters on the TV show in the books, or are they just made up for the show? I’m talking about the Olsons, Mr. Edwards, Reverend (I forgot his name), Mr. Hansen, Doc Baker, etc.
Some of each. The Olsens are really in the books, but don’t figure nearly so largely (especially the parents). Nellie is indeed Laura’s nemesis, right up to when she flirts with Almanzo, but she isn’t in every book.
Mr. Edwards is mentioned in at least one book–he brings Christmas presents when the weather is too bad for Santa Claus to get through. He’s a great character, but the family soon moved away from him.
A Reverend features fairly largely in one or two of the later books. The others are pretty much made up, I think, and later on in the series all of the new characters were made up. The biggest mention of a doctor in any of the books is when the whole family comes down with “the ague,” and Laura wakes up to see a black doctor taking care of her, in what is at first a pretty nightmarish sequence, since she was feverish and hallucinating a little. (In a later book, during a rhetoric contest, she uses the incident as an illustration of her argument that the Indians are even worse off than blacks in America.)
I’m glad my mom still has our old copies; I can borrow them!
True words, there. Mr. Hansen and Doc Baker were not in the books. The rest were, but sadly, sadly changed. This is a subject I could write volumes about – as you can see from my previous post. However, I’m really busy today, so I’ll just direct you to an earlier thread on the subject. If you have further comments or questions, post them and I’ll be sure to expound at tiresome length once I have a few minutes.
Speaking of books with deleted chapters, has anyone else read the hard cover orginal version of Betty Smith’s “Maggie-Now.” The paperback left out about a 1/3 of it!
I have! What-all did they leave out (I have a pretty good idea; just asking).
Stacks of stuff. Pat’s night school experiences, Mary’s visits to the cemetary and her friendship with the priest, the details of Maggie-Now’s raising of Denny come to mind. The hardcover original is much more interesting.