I learned on the Writer’s Almanac that today is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s birthday. She was born 143 years ago, and received her 6 gentle birthday spankings from Pa 137 years ago today.
My mother read the series to us when we took our trip across the country in 1978. There were five of us in the 1973 Plymouth Satellite station wagon, packed to the hilt with camping supplies (we tent-camped from New York to California), but with nary an ipod, a cd-player or headphones, or even a tape player in the car. It was AM radio, and the Little House books, and we were all in it together.
Now my daughters have listened to the series from the Big Woods through These Happy Golden Years. I’ve enjoyed revisiting the tales as an adult and learning more about Laura through John E. Miller’s biography. Certain ideals we value have been clarified in her books: contentment with little in the way of material possessions, valuing what you have, love and security no matter how unstable your outward circumstances, and personal resourcefulness.
There’s a Today Show interview with Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura on the television series and now plays Ma in a stage adaptation, here. My reflections on the Little House books are here and here; my review of John E. Miller’s Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder is here.
Happy birthday, Half Pint. Your decision to share your life experiences was a great gift to us all.
More Laura links:
I never knew of these books until I had my own children, but they definitely became a formative part of their upbringing. My most memorable reading was one wintry night when we stayed up way past our bedtimes because we just had to get to the end of The Long Winter.
Wow — I saw at Semi-colon’s that it is Dicken’s birthday as well — his 150th. Two well-known literary giants of very different styles.
Well, how did I miss this? We were traveling this weekend, so when I pulled up your post on the laptop, I immediately read parts of it to my family. Happy birthday, LIW, and thanks for the heads up!
This just showed up in my RSS feed. Happy Birthday to Half-pint. I didn’t read them until I was an adult. I still fell in love with their charm.