A review by rebeccatc
The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

5.0

I read The Long Winter many times as a child and just read it aloud to my eight year old daughter. I’ve often said it is one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. If you aren't frightened by temperatures forty below zero, constant blizzards in a town cut off from supplies for seven months straight, with only hay to burn for heat, then you are made of stronger stuff than I. When the Ingalls Family was down to their last six potatoes, with no prospects for any other food to eat, the terror was real. What really makes this book memorable is how Wilder portrays the psychological impact of the relentless conditions. The way Laura hears screams and violence in the endless blizzard winds; the images of Pa as a starving man on the edge of his sanity; the way their subsistence existence puts the entire family into a depression, unable to think clearly or distinguish one day from the next; and the ultimate blow when Pa’s hands are too cold and stiff even to play the fiddle. I can’t recommend this book enough and it is especially good for school aged children to appreciate the hardships suffered by others, in particular the American pioneers.