Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Book cover picture grabbed from Amazon.com

As many of you know, I make a weekly poetry collage from state travel brochures and other magazines. When South Dakota came, I found out Pioneer Girl  by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It is the annotated autobiography. So the next stop was Amazon. It was on backorder. My husband purchased it for me  two months ago and I finally received it last Wednesday. Today I finished it. It is an excellent book and worth the $30 paid. Should I ever find myself in South Dakota, I will definitely be visiting De Smet and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum.

I love the Little House series. I read all the books when I was young and my brother in law gave me the entire set that he found in his house. I also love the show. There are really no words to describe this book. According to the introductory information Wilder wrote this book and hoped to sell it. With her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, they made it publication ready for a juvenile audience. But there wasn't enough interest in the book. As a suggestion to Lane to make it more salable, to make a series of children's books from the original manuscript which Wilder did. She wrote this autobiography when she was in her 60's.  This book is the original manuscript with thoroughly researched annotations, photographs and maps.

If you read any of the books the material is the some what the same but the annotations are there to guide on who what really happened and who is really who. The Little House books were fiction but based on Laura's life. This book is Laura's life.  The annotations in itself were interesting and the pictures were awesome. If you are like me, you probably thought Charles Ingalls in the show. To see the real people is just so interesting.  This book is American history, the western part of American history. Reading Pioneer Girl is sort of like listening to an elderly person talking about the good old days. 

It makes you think about your own history and your family's history. Could you find the census records or newspaper clippings from the town a grandparents lived in as children. Could you find old photos? I think you could. Years ago I went to Ellis Island and I found my great grandfathers record of immigrating to this country from Germany. I made a copy and gave it to my grandmother.  Our history is interesting. That is something to think about for all of us. Maybe we should write down our lives so our kids know where we came from. 

Till next time...