There are new titles coming out about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family all the time. It makes it hard for a writer with an interest in sharing Laura's story to come up with a unique idea that will be attractive to publishers. But that's exactly what Laura Ingalls Wilder biographer, John E. Miller did with Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town: Where History & Literature Meet.
As a review by Library Journal says, "Taking concepts such as place and community, freedom and control, and love and affection, Miller considers how they operate in Wilder's novels of prairie life..."
The amount of research Miller put into this book is evident and there are almost twenty pictures, maps, and diagrams--some of which I had never seen before.
Focusing on Wilder's By the Shores of Silver Lake and Little Town on the Prairie, Miller proves how Laura's novels are just as historically valid as nonfiction accounts of the time period because these are Wilder's experiences as a young pioneer girl growing up on the prairie--living history.
Other interesting portions of this book include:
* Miller's discussion on the controversy over Rose Wilder Lane's involvement in writing the first eight novels of the series
* The similiar historical contributions of Harvey Dunn and Laura Ingalls Wilder, though Dunn was a painter and Wilder a novelist
* And fact and interpretation in Wilder's novels
All this and more makes this one of the most interesting Laura Ingalls Wilder biographies I have ever read.
1 comment:
I'll have to try and get it in a few months. I loved the other similar one I bought, and think of the details occasionally.
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