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A review by chloejen
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
4.0
if you want to know what book brings me back to long car rides and trips to the public library with my mom, it’s this one.
6 year old chloe with her walkman and little house on the prairie cds has probably listened to this entire series via audiobook ten times. besides maybe harry potter, this is the most nostalgic over a book i could possibly be. if you want to know how obsessed i was, 8 year old me dressed up as laura ingalls wilder for halloween.(looking back, that’s a little weird but whatever i guess)
there’s something so damn cozy about literally everything in this book. it also makes me unreasonably hungry.
yes it has problems, yes it romanticizes a lot of stuff but at least this book doesn’t have questionable race based comments. yet. that comes in later...
i have such an odd relationship with these books because i read them again two years ago as a (slightly) more competent person than i was in elementary school and i, for the first time, noticed all of the lines that haven’t aged well. whether that be the interactions with indigenous people or laura straight up saying she doesn’t care about or care for the suffragist movement in ‘these happy golden years.’ if you’ve ever had to come to terms with the fact that some things that you remember having a golden shroud around them are not perfect- you know what i’m talking about.
this book and its respective series make me so happy and so sad at the same time. it both reminds me of sitting in the back of the car with my headphones on listening to cherry jones narrate and how those times are long gone, nor were they as perfect as i might have thought they were.
dang... i’m tearing up now. what the heck.
tldr: love this book and am terribly sad that it has flaws but it does
6 year old chloe with her walkman and little house on the prairie cds has probably listened to this entire series via audiobook ten times. besides maybe harry potter, this is the most nostalgic over a book i could possibly be. if you want to know how obsessed i was, 8 year old me dressed up as laura ingalls wilder for halloween.(looking back, that’s a little weird but whatever i guess)
there’s something so damn cozy about literally everything in this book. it also makes me unreasonably hungry.
yes it has problems, yes it romanticizes a lot of stuff but at least this book doesn’t have questionable race based comments. yet. that comes in later...
i have such an odd relationship with these books because i read them again two years ago as a (slightly) more competent person than i was in elementary school and i, for the first time, noticed all of the lines that haven’t aged well. whether that be the interactions with indigenous people or laura straight up saying she doesn’t care about or care for the suffragist movement in ‘these happy golden years.’ if you’ve ever had to come to terms with the fact that some things that you remember having a golden shroud around them are not perfect- you know what i’m talking about.
this book and its respective series make me so happy and so sad at the same time. it both reminds me of sitting in the back of the car with my headphones on listening to cherry jones narrate and how those times are long gone, nor were they as perfect as i might have thought they were.
dang... i’m tearing up now. what the heck.
tldr: love this book and am terribly sad that it has flaws but it does