Little House on the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie

• Genre: Fiction; middle grade historical
• Originally Published: 1935
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 820L; grades 4-7
• Structure/Length: 26 chapters; approx. 335 pages; approx. 5 hours, 45 minutes on audio
• Protagonist/Central Conflict: Laura Ingalls and her family leave their home in Wisconsin and travel in their covered wagon to Kansas. Laura describes how her father built their log house and their encounters with the local Native Americans. Just when they start to settle in, they have to move again when US soldiers tell them their house is just inside Indian Territory.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Racist/intolerant and insensitive language choices; racism, racial slurs, xenophobia, colonization       

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Author

• Bio: 1867-1957; American writer known for the Little House on the Prairie series, based on her childhood; second of five children; spent much of her childhood traveling from home to home with her family, finally moving to De Smet, South Dakota, when her father accepted a job with the railroad; felt compelled to help her family financially, so she taught school; after her marriage to Almanzo Wilder in 1885, a series of unfortunate events befell them (diphtheria partially paralyzing Almanzo, death of an infant son, their home burning down), resulting in a move to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894, where she and Almanzo spent the rest of their lives; columnist with the Missouri Ruralist in 1911, writing a column called “As a Farm Woman Thinks”; the stock market crash of 1929 wiped out their savings, leading Laura to seek publication of Pioneer Girl, the manuscript that would eventually become the Little House on the Prairie series.