Pioneer Girl: The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder by William Anderson

Pioneer Girl is a picture book biography of one of America's most famous pioneers, Laura Ingalls Wilder and author of the beloved "Little House on the Prairie" children's novels. Laura Ingalls was born on February 7, 1867 to Charles and Caroline Ingalls in the Big Woods region of Wisconsin. She was the second of five children in the Ingalls family which included older sister Mary Amelia, and younger siblings Caroline Celestia, Charles Frederick, and Grace Pearl.

Laura Ingalls' story in that of a life on the move. When she was two-years-old, Laura's family moved to Kansas, where they settled on the Osage Diminished Reserve. However, they had been incorrectly advised that this land was available for resettlement. It was land that belong to the Osage Indians and so they decided to return to Wisconsin in 1871, to their old homestead in the Big Woods. They stayed there for the next three years. In 1874, when Laura was seven-years-old they moved to the wide open prairies of Minnesota, living first on rented land near Lake City. They then moved to Walnut Grove.

Laura's family lived through a locust plague that destroyed crops from the Dakota's to Texas. The Rocky Mountain locust which was responsible for this destruction, went extinct in 1902. Laura's family moved frequently during these years, to South Troy, Minnesota where Laura's brother Charles was born in 1875 ( He passed away at the age of nine months in 1876.), to Burr Oaks, Iowa, where Grace Ingalls was born in 1877 and returning to Walnut Grove in 1878.

Laura's father began working for the railroad, requiring him to move to the Dakota Territory in the spring of 1879. Finally Charles settled his family down, homesteading in DeSmet, Dakota. Laura Ingalls Wilder's novel, The Long Winter describes the severe winter of 1880-81, which Laura's family along with others in the state endured. The first blizzard hit in October of 1880 and the winter saw numerous storms that harvesting crops difficult in the fall, and train service unreliable by January of 1881. On February 2, 1881, a nine-day snowstorm raged filling the streets "with solid drifts to the tops of the buildings".

The Ingalls sisters: Carrie, Mary and Laura in the early 1880's.

With her family now settled in DeSmet, Laura was able to attend school regularly. She made friends with Almanzo Wilder whom she called "Manly" and who was ten years her senior. Laura began teaching school to help her parents, just shy of her sixteenth birthday. Laura would continue to teach while still attending school herself until she married Almanzo in 1885. Their first child, Rose was born on December 5, 1886. A second child, a son was born in 1889 but died twelve days after birth.

Laura and Almanzo's life was challenging and interesting; they suffered illness, crop failures and the loss of  their home. They left DeSmet in 1890, living briefly in Florida but returned in 1892. They then moved to Mansfield, Missouri in 1894 where they purchased land outside the town. They named their farm Rocky Ridge and built it into a successful mixed farm that included dairy, poultry and fruit. They would live at Rocky Ridge for the rest of their lives.

In Pioneer Girl, William Anderson offers young readers many interesting details of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life from her childhood in Wisconsin, through to her later years when she was famous for her Little House on the Prairie novels which were written for children. Accompanying the simple text are the lovely full page colour illustrations by Dan Andreasen. Anderson has written extensively about the Ingalls and Wilder families including a biography about Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Laura Ingalls Wilder Country Cookbook.

Pioneer Girl is a must read for young readers who would like to know the real story and chronology behind the Little House on the Prairie books. Although Ingalls Wilder claimed her books were autobiographical, they were not and in fact contained many fictional characters and events. Nevertheless, Laura's novels provide a unique insight to the pioneer experience in America in a way that is both interesting and informative.

Book Details:

Pioneer Girl: The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder by William Anderson
New York: HarperCollins Publishers     1998