by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
Minnesotans love Laura Ingalls Wilder.
She was a Minnesotan for part of her
childhood, so
On the Banks of Plum Creek is set here.
Personally, I love the window into history
that Laura’s well-written children’s books give us.
Pioneerland libraries
are bringing in a Laura Ingalls Wilder interactive history performer between
late October and Thanksgiving. Historian
Melanie Stringer acts the part of Laura in the mid-1890s, when she, Almanzo,
and their young daughter Rose had settled on Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri. Stringer has studied Wilder extensively, and
she travels the country presenting Laura as she might have been after she had
lived through the events in her books but before she became a writer.
The programs in Meeker County are happening in early
November.
Our first “Meet Laura Ingalls
Wilder” program will be in the community room behind the Grove City Library on
Friday, November 2, at 6:00 p.m.
The
event at the Litchfield Library will be on Wednesday, November 7, at 6:00
p.m.
Cosmos Library hosts its program in
the community room next to the library on Thursday, November 8, at 10:00
a.m.
And Dassel Library’s program will
be held upstairs at the Dassel History Center and Ergot Museum at 10:00 a.m. on
Saturday, November 10.
All are free to
attend, funded with assistance from the Clean Water, Land, & Legacy
Amendment, and there’s no need to sign up.
So what can you check out at the library if you want to
learn more about Laura before or after the events?
We have many things to choose from.
We have the
Little House series itself in the
children’s department, including some in audiobook format – good for a family
road trip.
The library has the recent adult novel
Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller.
This
popular book imagines the story of the Ingalls family from the perspective of
Ma Ingalls.
If you’ve ever thought about
what Caroline must have gone through every time Charles decided to move the
family, this may be a book you’d enjoy.
Caroline Fraser won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for
her book
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
This comprehensive historical biography of
Wilder is based on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and
financial records.
Fraser demonstrates
that Wilder’s life was even more difficult than her books show, despite the
hardships they describe.
I just finished reading
Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, the bestselling book that the South Dakota Historical Society
published in 2014.
It was Wilder’s first
crack at writing down her life story, and it demonstrated to me how good she
was as a novelist.
As she revised the
stories multiple times, Wilder fictionalized some characters and events, and she
made her word choices more vivid, which made the novels suspenseful and
moving.
This scholarly book also makes
it clear that Laura wrote the books and had good instincts for them, and her
daughter Rose did not.
If you are enthusiastic about Laura like I am, or if you
just want to learn more about the realities of pioneer history, come to one of
our programs.
If none of the dates in
our county work for you, check out the whole
Pioneerland schedule on our
website, because Melanie will be performing in Hutchinson, Atwater, and in many
other communities in the region.
