On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I know I started this book two or three times when I was a kid. I remember the dugout house and the cow named Reet because she had markings resembling a reet (wreath) of roses on her side. (Caroline Ingalls insisted the cow’s name be changed to Spot, apparently having little tolerance for the foreignness of the cow’s original Norwegian owners.) I didn’t get much further than that, however, which is a bit sad. I feel like I missed out on a lot of good childhood reading because I was so distractible.

It’s a pleasure to read of these simple homesteading, pioneer times from young Laura’s point of view. The days are filled with new discoveries and wonders and Laura faces it all with a cheerful optimism. There are many anxious moments and downright dangerous situations, but our little heroine faces them all bravely and scrupulously and her adventures usually have happy, or at least satisfying, endings (including those involving the infamous Nellie Oleson, to whom we are introduced in On the Banks of Plum Creek).

I sometimes wonder if Wilder not only wrote her books to entertain children, but to give a more cynical nod to adults who might be reading. Laura, with a child’s naiveté, doesn’t always seem to recognize how grave her situation is, how poor her family is, how much debt her father must be in, how hard it must be for her mother to stay alone with her children in the middle of nowhere while her father walks a couple hundred miles to find work in a pair of worn-out boots. Any adult reading this can see the more worrisome undertones of this story and might not think it would be so much fun to walk three miles to town across the creek barefoot. Days-long blizzards, prairie fires, and plagues of grasshoppers are hardly things to sigh over with wistful nostalgia. And most women could probably read a little more into Caroline Ingalls’s, “Oh, Charles!” like, “Oh Charles, what did you get us into this time?”

But I think there are lessons for us adults to be learned from light-hearted Laura as well. This little girl never complains. I love the simple appreciation with which she approaches each day, feeling true gratitude for the very few new things her family can afford. I love the way she carefully observes the minutia of her environment. I love the way she trusts and loves her family and is comfortable with her role within it. And I could learn a thing or two from Laura about schooling one’s temper, especially when dealing with the likes of spoiled and nasty Nellie Oleson. I think I would have punched her in the nose.


A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now