Two summers ago my husband and I went on a weeklong trip to the Black Hills area of South Dakota. This spring, we moved from the Chicagoland area to a small town in Iowa. Something unexpected happened to me with both events: I fell in love with America. The great expanses, beautiful under the warm sun, brought me closer to nature than I’d been in years and showed me that the rural Midwest is truly the heart of the country. Where blue skies meet golden prairies or great stretches of green cornfields, wildflowers line the roads, and wildlife is easily sighted, peace of mind comes easily and fortitude seems to spontaneously spring within you.
I read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series as a child and loved it, and Laura Ingalls Wilder Country, William Anderson’s illustrated tour of the many places Wilder called home, reminds me just how central the sense of place—physical place—was to Wilder's life and is to her books. I'm glad I stumbled upon Anderson's book and bought it in South Dakota and finally recently read it after visiting one of the Ingalls family residences, the Masters Hotel in Burr Oak, Iowa.
Laura Ingalls Wilder Country brings together gorgeous modern photos by Leslie A. Kelly of the landscapes where Wilder lived in Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, and Missouri with photos of the exteriors and interiors of the Ingalls and Wilder homes, the families’ belongings, and the family members themselves. Pieced throughout are illustrations from the Little House books by Garth Williams—which brought warm memories rolling back to me—as well as first-edition Little House book illustrations by Helen Sewell and Mildred Boyle, along with artwork depicting the regions, including paintings by Wilder herself. Informative text and captions describe the Ingalls and Wilder families’ lives in each place. From the log cabin in the Big Woods to Laura and Almanzo’s beloved farmhouse in Missouri’s Ozark Mountain country, each home and landscape comes to life thanks to Anderson’s research, Kelly’s beautiful color photos, and the absolutely fascinating photos of the Ingalls family and objects such as Pa’s fiddle. Special sections on Laura and Almanzo’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane; Almanzo’s family and his childhood near Malone, New York; and the lives of Laura’s parents and her sisters, Mary, Carrie, and Grace, beyond the Little House books round out the work.
Anderson’s book has inspired me to reread Wilder’s books, and I can’t wait to see them through my adult eyes.
Grade: A
Paintings by the fantastic Harvey Dunn (1884-1952), the renowned South Dakota artist, whose uncle Nate Dow actually married Grace Ingalls.
This book sounds really cool. I want to see the pics!
ReplyDeleteDid you know I have what I think is a 1953 edition of Little House on the Prairie? I got it off Ebay and can't remember the details anymore but inside it says something about newly illustrated edition and 1953. Back when I bought this I had wanted to get the whole series in hard cover, the oldest copies I could find. Heh, yeah, only got the one and gave up.
You can borrow it along with The Reader. :)
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that about the eBay book--that's pretty cool.