Award winner-Newbery Honor Winner
This novel was RAR's winter selection for the family read aloud novel. My dad read aloud this entire series to me when I was in early elementary school. I loved this series and am so thankful that he read aloud quality literature to me at a young age. I wasn't sure how my thirteen-year-old son would respond to this novel. I was pleasantly surprised. He looked forward to hearing it and would ask for me to read it (my sixteen-year-old son would even listen in occasionally, incredulous of what the Ingalls family was enduring). We also listened to some chapters on audio/CDs while driving to appointments.
Laura relates how her family survives an seemingly endless winter in the Dakota territory in 1880-1881. Blizzards tormented the settlers from October through April. Trains could not come through until May! As a result, the people in her town were starving. Almanzo Wilder (her future husband) and Cap Garland save the town by traveling in a blizzard to buy some wheat from a settler rumored to have a store of wheat.
Mrs. Wilder immerses the reader in the winter and the hardship with her descriptive language and use of imagery. This book makes an impression. I could not believe that the only food they had in the house was a handful of grain to make flour. When I glance around our house with freezers, fridge, pantries and cupboards full, I cannot comprehend knowing that all I have to make a meal is a bit of flour and no sign of finding/purchasing food in the near future. People were tough and optimistic "in those days".
Discuss-Some of the settlers are prejudice vs. Native Americans and spoke unkindly about them.
**Highly, highly recommend.
-I own this book.
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