Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House on the Prairie Cast Book Collection

 

As a book lover, I have a few collections. One of my most beloved is all the books by or about Laura Ingalls Wilder, her family, her writings, and those by Little House on the Prairie cast members. Currently, the collection comprises 124 books. I've read most of them. 

Do you collect books? If you do, which collection is your favorite? 

New from Pamela Smith Hill: Too Good to Be Altogether Lost: Rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books

 

Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the well-known Little House series, wrote stories from her childhood because they were “too good to be altogether lost.” And those stories seemed far from being lost during the remainder of her lifetime and through most of the twentieth century. They were translated into dozens of languages; generations of children read them at school; and dedicated readers made pilgrimages to the settings of the Little House books. With the release of NBC’s Little House on the Prairie series in 1974, Wilder was well on her way to becoming an international literary superstar. Simultaneously, however, the novels themselves began to slip from view, replaced by an onslaught of assumptions and questions about Wilder’s values and politics and even about the books’ authenticity. From the 1980s, a slow but steady critical crescendo began to erode Wilder’s literary reputation.

In Too Good to Be Altogether Lost, Wilder expert Pamela Smith Hill dives back into the Little House books, closely examining Wilder’s text, her characters, and their stories. Hill reveals that these gritty, emotionally complex novels depict a realistic coming of age for a girl in the American West. This realism in Wilder’s novels, once perceived as a fatal flaw, can lead to essential discussions not only about the past but about the present—and the underlying racism young people encounter when reading today. Hill’s fresh approach to Wilder’s books, including surprising revelations about Wilder’s novel The First Four Years, shows how this author forever changed the literary landscape of children’s and young adult literature in ways that remain vital and relevant today.

Check Goodreads to see where you can buy Too Good to Be Altogether Lost.

New Book for Laura Fans Coming in 2017 from State Historical Society

Found on the South Dakota State News site is the following press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 23, 2016
CONTACT:  Jeff Mammenga, Media Coordinator, (605) 773-6000, jeff.mammenga@state.sd.us

New book on Laura Ingalls Wilder coming in 2017 from State Historical Society

PIERRE, S.D.—To celebrate the 150th birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder in 2017, the South Dakota State Historical Society will release a new book on the writer’s legacy.

In 2014, the South Dakota Historical Society Press released Wilder’s “Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography,” edited by Pamela Smith Hill, which became a national bestseller. The new book, “Pioneer Girl Perspectives: Exploring Laura Ingalls Wilder,” edited by Nancy Tystad Koupal, will bring together writers from across the continent to explore the impact that “Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography” made on our understanding of one of America’s most iconic authors.

“Readers want to know more about Wilder and her creative process,” said Koupal. “This book will gather important voices on topics like Wilder’s collaboration with her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, the influence of Wilder’s personal politics in her personal voice and her lasting place in children’s literature. The national response to ‘Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography’ shows how keenly readers want to dig deeper into these topics and others.”

Sales for “Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography” shot past original expectations, and the book is now in its ninth printing with 165,000 copies in print. A contract for Japanese translation rights is underway between the South Dakota Historical Society Press and Taishukan Publishing.

In addition to “Pioneer Girl Perspectives,” two more volumes dedicated to sharing Wilder’s publishing journey are being planned. The first, slated for publication in 2018, will examine the edited typescripts that came after Wilder’s original, handwritten manuscript and will constitute a rigorous study of Rose Wilder Lane as editor. The second volume will utilize manuscript material leading readers directly from Wilder’s “Pioneer Girl” texts to Wilder’s rough draft of “Little House in the Woods.”

Preorders for “Pioneer Girl Perspectives: Exploring Laura Ingalls Wilder” will open in November 2016; the book will be available in the spring of 2017. Wilder was born Feb. 7, 1867, and died on Feb. 10, 1957. More book details will be released by the Pioneer Girl Project on its website pioneergirlproject.org in the coming weeks.

Koupal is director and editor-in-chief of the Pioneer Girl Project and the South Dakota Historical Society Press. Since 1997, the Press has served its readers and authors with award-winning books and gained a national reputation for excellence. Koupal has over 30 years of editorial experience. She is also a board member of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society in De Smet, S.D., and did postgraduate work in American literature at the University of Wisconsin.

“Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography” is available for $39.95 plus shipping and tax through www.sdshspress.com.

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About the South Dakota State Historical Society
The South Dakota State Historical Society is a division of the Department of Education. The State Historical Society, an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, is headquartered at the South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre. The center houses the society’s world-class museum, the archives, and the historic preservation, publishing and administrative/development offices. Call (605) 773-3458 or visit www.history.sd.gov for more information. The society also has an archaeology office in Rapid City; call (605) 394-1936 for more information.

Upcoming Release: The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder by William Anderson

Available for the first time and collected in one volume, the letters of one of America’s most beloved authors, Laura Ingalls Wilder—a treasure trove that offers new and unexpected understanding of her life and work.

The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder is a vibrant, deeply personal portrait of this revered American author, illuminating her thoughts, travels, philosophies, writing career, and dealings with family, friends, and fans as never before.

This is a fresh look at the adult life of the author in her own words. Gathered from museums and archives and personal collections, the letters span over sixty years of Wilder’s life, from 1894–1956 and shed new light on Wilder’s day-to-day life. Here we see her as a businesswoman and author—including her beloved Little House books, her legendary editor, Ursula Nordstrom, and her readers—as a wife, and as a friend. In her letters, Wilder shares her philosophies, political opinions, and reminiscences of life as a frontier child. Also included are letters to her daughter, writer Rose Wilder Lane, who filled a silent role as editor and collaborator while the famous Little House books were being written.

Wilder biographer William Anderson collected and researched references throughout these letters and the result is an invaluable historical collection, tracing Wilder’s life through the final days of covered wagon travel, her life as a farm woman, a country journalist, Depression-era author, and years of fame as the writer of the Little House books. This collection is a sequel to her beloved books, and a snapshot into twentieth-century living.

New Survey: Do you Plan to Buy The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure?

At the Little House on the Prairie forum I belong to, we've been talking about The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure.

This book is due to be released on April 14th and is already available for pre-order from Amazon.

Here is the product description from Amazon:

Wendy McClure is on a quest to find the world of beloved Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder — a fantastic realm of fiction, history, and places McClure has never been to yet somehow knows by heart. She traces the pioneer journey of the Ingalls family—looking for the Big Woods among the medium trees in Wisconsin, wading in Plum Creek, and enduring a prairie hailstorm in South Dakota. She immerses herself in all things Little House — exploring the story from fact to fiction, and from the TV shows to the annual summer pageants in Laura’s hometowns. Whether she’s churning butter in her apartment or sitting in a replica log cabin, McClure is always in pursuit of “the Laura experience.” Along the way she comes to understand how Wilder’s life and work have shaped our ideas about girlhood and the American West. The Wilder Life is a loving, irreverent, spirited tribute to a series of books that have inspired generations of American women. It is also an incredibly funny first-person account of obsessive reading, and a story about what happens when we reconnect with our childhood touchstones — and find that our old love has only deepened.

Publisher's Weekly gave The Wilder Life a starred review, saying, "Readers don't need to be Wilder fans to enjoy this funny and thoughtful guide to a romanticized version of the American expansion west."

Our new survey asks if you plan to purchase a copy of the book. I will be adding this to my Laura Ingalls Wilder collection. How about you?

New Book about Laura Ingalls Wilder Due out in 2010

According to the Janaury 12, 2009 issue of Publisher's Weekly, Riverhead--a division of Penguin Group--has acquired the rights to Wendy McClure's new book, The Wilder Life. It's a first person narrative that explores Laura's life and work.

The author made a brief mention of the book at her blog, which you'll find here.

I love it when I get a chance to add to my Laura Ingalls Wilder collection!