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Reviews and recommendations for Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder were overwhelmingly positive at the initial time of publication in 1932. Critical reception remains positive through the twenty-first century. Reviewers and little girls alike love Little House in the Big Woods.
Reviews
Bookman 75 (Dec. 1932): 847.
LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS by Laura Ingalls Wilder, drawings by Helen Sewell (Harpers. $2.00)
Laura Ingalls Wilder recalls her own pioneer childhood of nearly sixty years ago. Life on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin — making bread, seeing bear tracks in the snow, going to town, getting a new calico dress, hearing wolves howl — becomes a romance for twentieth-century girls.
Eaton, Anne T. New York Times Book Review 24 Apr.. 1932: 9.
Books for Children
By ANNE T. EATON
LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS. By Laura Ingalls Wilder. Drawings by Helen Sewell. 176 pp. New York: Harper & Brothers. $2.
This little story for 8 to 10 year olds has a refreshingly genuine and lifelike quality. The author writes of the life she knew and lived sixty years ago on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin. She understands children's tastes and interests and the story of Laura and Mary and their parents, who lived in a log cabin, miles from neighbors and a settlement, is full of incidents and accounts of daily doings that boys and girls will enjoy. Christmas, when visiting aunts, uncles and cousins fill the little house to overflowing; churning and butter-making, hog-killing and "sugaring-off," harvest time and pumpkin pies, the wonderful new machine that threshed as much on one day as three men in three weeks, and other memories of pioneer life, are described with zest and humor. The characters are very much alive and the portrait of Laura's father, especially, is drawn with loving care and reality. The illustrations have charm and catch the spirit of the book.
Evans, Nancy. Booklist 28 (June 1932): 439.
Wilder, Mrs. Laura (Ingalls) Little house in the Big Woods; illus. By Helen Sewell. N. Y. Harper, 1932. 176p. illus. $2.
The center of interest in this story, which spans a year, is little Laura, the middle child of a Wisconsin pioneer family sixty years ago. The story is filled with the intimate details that made up the family's workaday and independent life, and throughout a child's viewpoint is preserved without limiting the story. Distinctive, interesting illustrations and attractive format. For children of eight to ten or eleven.
32-9672
Hirschl, Jessie. "Recapturing Rapture." New York Herald Tribune Books 12 June. 1932: 5.
Recapturing Rapture
LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS
By Laura Ingalls Wilder. Illustrated by Helen Sewell...New York: Harper and Brothers...$2.
Reviewed by JESSIE HIRSCHL
"TO THE east of the little log house, and to the west, there were miles upon miles of tress, and only a few little log houses, scattered far apart, in the edge of the big woods." In these days of modern metropolitan grandmothers, the cry: "Grandma, tell us about when you were a little girl!" has been, if not exactly a cry in the wilderness, at least as far from an answer. This small saga of Pioneer Wisconsin is a satisfying response. It should be read by all Middle border children — and by many others, to whom its experiences will not be even an echo of word-of-mouth inheritance. Too few, nowadays, can tell as real and treasurable a story.
Moreover, this story is delightfully told. Its simple sentences have a gentle cadence suggesting the plain and gracious prose-poetry of the author of "The Time of Man." They are lit up throughout by an awareness of all things, inanimate or living, and this awareness fills all the pages with bright picture-patches, like the pretty flower patterned calico bits in a quilt. The snow-birds make "little feather-stitching tracks" across the snow: Laura's young aunts at the sugaring-off dance; "looked lovely, sailing over the floor so smoothly with their large round skirts. Their little waists rose up tight and slender in the middle, and their cheeks were red and their eyes w ere bright under the wings of shining, sleek hair. Aunt Docia's dress was wine colored calico, covered all over with a feathery pattern. It buttoned with gold-colored buttons, and every button had a little castle and tree carved on it." And again, the visit to Laura's own grandparents, whose log cabin was much larger than the one where Laura lived. "The whole house smelled good, with the sweet and spicy smells from the kitchen, and the smell of the hickory logs burning with clear, bright flame in the fireplace, and the small of a clove-apple beside the mending basket on the table. The sunshine came in through the sparkling window-panes, and everything was large and spacious and clean." Smoking hams, preparing headcheese, or cheeses with rennet, molding bullets, making hominy and maple sugar — all these happen, step by step, as real as recipes, yet in no sense do they seem drudgery. Each is an interlude in the serene progression of the seasons. Chores, once taken for granted, seem like the traditional nettle once embraces. Bears and panthers in the offing are merely an established hazard — like street crossing to this generation. Mrs. Wilder, at any rate, like Aeneas, finds it pleasant to have remembered these things — and makes us believe it so.
The fallacy of our wails for a simple life, the wooden insincerity of campaigns for "Pioneer Meals" and the like, to underwrite what, with euphemistic humor, we are told to call the Depression, are clear as one reads this book. The difference is in the fact that to the small girl in the Little House the bigger log cabin was large, and spacious, and Ma's green delaine was almost too rich and fine to touch, and Auth Ruby was proud to wear the beautiful white stockings, knit of fine cotton thread, in lacy openwork patterns, which the humblest cash-girl would rot now "be seen dead in." That carrots, steamed and strained in hot milk for the churning, so that the winter butter would still be yellow and pretty, were afterward saved as a special treat for supper, is strange hearing, to mothers weary of murmuring: "Eat your carrots, darling. Think of the vitamines!" The world is certainly too much with us, and goodness knows when or whether we ever will be able to recapture that outmoded rapture. Nevertheless, it was genuine rapture, and one is forced to doubt the efficacy of gangster-movies, sex-appeal, artichokes, rhumbas and general ballyhoo, to supply as good a brand.
The book's make-up is entirely in character — a homespun-color linen jacket, and inner boards calicoed with tiny strawberry leaves and blossoms. The illustrations are by Helen Sewell, and are pleasantly reminiscent of woodcuts and daguerreotypes. (Eight-twelve years.)
Moore, Anne Carroll. Atlantic Monthly 150 (Nov. 1932): 26.
For younger children also there is a delightful and absorbing true story called The Little House in the Big Woods (Harpers, $2.00), by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The Big Woods are those of Wisconsin, the house a log cabin miles from a settlement, and the life of which Mrs. Wilder writes with such lively recollection and keen pleasure is her own childhood experience. An atmosphere of festivity and good comradeship between children and their elders pervades the book. Helen Sewell has made drawings in perfect harmony with the text. In design and illustration the book is one of the most distinctive of the year.
ANNE CARROLL MOORE
Awards
"Laura Ingalls Wilder Award." The Horn Book 30.4 (Aug. 1954): 474-476.
Long, Harriet G. "The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award." Top of the News 21 (Jan. 1965): 131-133.
Recommendations
"One Hundred Books That Shaped the Century." School Library Journal. 1 Jan. 2000. Reed Elsevier Inc. 24 Oct. 2007.
<http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA153035.html?q=little+house+in+the+big+woods&>
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House in the Big Woods. illus. by Garth Williams. Harper, 1932.
Ongoing controversy about how Wilder portrayed Native Americans has not dulled children's ardor for the Little House books, which are based on the author's pioneer adventures. This book is the first in the series and features illustrations depicting the warm life of the Ingalls family. It remains one of its publisher's best-selling titles.
Bibliography of Author Biographies
Anderson, William. Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography. Harper Collins Publishers: New York: 1992.
Cimino, Maria. "Laura Ingalls Wilder." Wilson Library Bulletin 22.8 (Apr. 1948): 582.
Giff, Patricia Reilly. Laura Ingalls Wilder: Growing Up in the Little House. Puffin Books: New York, 1987.
"Laura Ingalls Wilder." Something About the Author. Ed. Anne Commire. Gale Research: Detroit, 1979. 300-309.
"Laura Ingalls Wilder." Who's Who of Children's Literature. Ed. Brian Doyle. Schocken Books: New York, 1968. 292-293.
Lewis, Naomi. "Laura Ingalls Wilder." Twentieth Century Children's Writers. Ed. D. L. Kirkpatrick. St. Martin's Press: New York, 1978. 1341-1344.
Piehl, Kathy. "Laura Ingalls Wilder." American Writers for Children. Ed. John Cech. Gale Research Co.: Detroit, 1983. 351-366.
Romines, Ann. "Laura (Elizabeth) Ingalls Wilder." Twentieth-Century Western Writers. 2nd ed. St. James Press: Chicago, 1991. 724-726.
Spaeth, Janet. Laura Ingalls Wilder. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987.
Vedder, Polly A. "Laura (Elizabeth) Ingalls Wilder." Contemporary Authors. Ed. Susan M. Trosky and Donna Olendorf. Vol. 137. Gale Research Inc.: Detroit, 1992. 469-472.
Zochert, Donald. Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Henry Regnery Co.: Chicago, 1976.
Bibliography of Literary Criticism
Anderson, William. "How the 'Little House' Books Found a Publishing Home." Language Arts 58 (Apr. 1981): 437-440.
Bignell, Shelia. "The Pioneer Childhood of Laura Ingalls Wilder." Children's Book Council of Victoria Newsletter 13 (July 1965): 6-8.
"Child of the West: The Enduring Vision of Laura Ingalls Wilder." The Times Literary Supplement 144.3 (1 June 1962): 412.
Colwell, Eileen H. "Laura Ingalls Wilder." The Journal Bookshelf 26 (Nov. 1962): 237-243.
Cooper, Bernice. The Contribution of Laura Ingalls Wilder to Children's Literature. MA thesis. University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, 1953.
Dalphin, Marcia. "Christmas in the Little House Books." The Horn Book 29.6 (Dec. 1953): 431-435.
Dykstra, Ralph Richard. "The Autobiographical Aspects of Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' Books." Diss. State University of New York at Buffalo, 1980.
Horn Book Magazine 29 (Dec. 1953): 411-439.
Kirkus, Virginia. "The Discovery of Laura Ingalls Wilder." Horn Book 29 (Dec. 1953): 428-430.
Moore, Rosa Ann. "Laura Ingalls Wilder's Orange Notebooks and the Art of the Little House Books." Children's Literature 4 (1975): 105-119.
Nordstrom, Ursula. "Re-issuing the Wilder Books." Top of the News 23 (Apr. 1967): 267.
Spaeth, Janet L. "'Over the Horizon of the Years': Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House Books." Diss. University of North Dakota, 1982.
Viguers, Ruth H. "Books, Children and Women." The Horn Book 43.2 (Apr. 1967): 152-153.
Bibliography of Reviews
Bagg, Susan. "Children's Books: Now Is Now." Atlantic Monthly 235.2 (Feb 1975): 117-120.
Bookman 75 (Dec. 1932): 847.
Children's Literature 24 (Annual 1996): 101.
Eaton, Anne T. New York Times Book Review 24 Apr.. 1932: 9.
Evans, Nancy. Booklist 28 (June 1932): 439.
Hirschl, Jessie. "Recapturing Rapture." New York Herald Tribune Books 12 June. 1932: 5.
Language Arts 68 (Jan. 1991): 52.
Lipson, Eden Ross. The Horn Book Magazine 76.6 (Nov. 2000): 730.
Moore, Anne Carroll. Atlantic Monthly 150 (Nov. 1932): 26.
The New Yorker 63 (30 Nov. 1987): 138.
Roman, Susan. Sequences: An Annotated Guide to Children's Fiction in Series. American Library Association: Chicago, 1985. 111-112.
School Library Journal 46.1 (Jan. 2000): 58.
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