The Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge

Welcome to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge!

Many of us grew up reading the Little House on the Prairie series, unwittingly getting our first taste of American history and laughing and sorrowing along with the Ingalls family. Every time I read them, at different ages and stages of life, I get a little something more or something different out of them and I enjoy them all over again. That is a characteristic of a true classic.

After participating in a couple of Carrie‘s reading challenges and discovering how fun it is to read an author at the same time with others, I decided to host a reading challenge based on Laura.

You can read the Little House books (any one or all of them if you’re up to that!), a biography of her, or any book somehow related to her. If you’d like to prepare a meal from the Ingalls’ recipes or do some other related project, we’d love to see it! You can read or do as little or as much as you’d like.

In the comments below you can leave a link to your blog post about what you plan to do for the challenge (or just tell us in the comments if you’d rather), and at the end of the challenge on Feb. 29, four weeks from today, I’ll post a wrap-up post so everyone can tell us how they did. I would encourage you to write a wrap-up post listing what you read and perhaps what you learned or enjoyed (or didn’t) about your reading time. If you want to write reviews of the individual books as you read them and then list your reviews in your wrap-up, that would be great, too.

I’ve had several books relating to Laura on my shelf unread for years, I am embarrassed to say, and I’d like to read them for this challenge. They are:

I Remember Laura by Stephen Hines. It’s not exactly a biography: the author states it is more a mosaic or cornucopia of letters, poems, columns, etc. from Laura and from various other people that shed more light on her life.

Little House in the Ozarks: the Rediscovered Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder edited by Stephen Hines. This is a collection of newspaper columns and magazine articles Laura wrote before she wrote the Little House books, arranged by subject. I have looked at bits and pieces of this but I’ve never read it all the way through.

Saving Graces: the Inspirational Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder edited by Stephen Hines.

I don’t know how I came to have three books written or edited by Stephen Hines!

I’d also like to reread at least the first book in the series, Little House in the Big Woods. If I have time I may read the next one as well.

I usually go through nonfiction much more slowly than fiction, so to have three nonfiction titles in a month is pushing it. But I’ve also hand on hand for a while The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure about seeking “the Laura experience” by going to some of the places and doing some of the activities mentioned in the books. I’m wary of it — I got kind of burned by recent experiences with modern secular books and bad language, and I’ve been told this is “irreverent,” and I am not quite sure how that will play out. But if I have time I might give it a try.

So…those are my plans. Will you join me? What are you planning to read?

Thanks to the Grab My Button Code Generator for the button and grab box below!

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