This is the first volume of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and includes Little House in the Big Woods, Farmer Boy, Little House on the Prairie and On the Banks of Plum Creek (in publishing order). I found this book on the shelves in Fiction and realized that while I had read and re-read all of the books when I was growing up, it had been a really long time since I had revisited them.
It's interesting to read the books as an adult, with the knowledge of American history. When I was a child, I was fascinated by the stories and the people, and all of the descriptions of Laura's life. I didn't think too much about her parents' homesteading, or what they thought of the Indians they encountered.
However, reading these stories now has a different flavor. Understanding how much hard work it took to homestead, and the amount of just hard, grinding work it could be, makes me see these stories a little differently. It's still easy for me to envision the people and places (even without any illustrations) and I enjoy the stories. However, it's interesting to read, for example, about Laura's Pa's feeling about going out West and how it's land for the white men to settle (and the Indians to move off of). It's sobering to read the stories now, with my knowledge of American history and the shameful treatment of the native people here. Laura's Pa is more tolerant of the Indians, although Laura's Ma is less so, and it's a little cringeworthy to read some of that now.
However, I can appreciate the stories for what they are, and for when they were written. This edition, published by The Library of America, has a great Appendix which contains the text of a few speeches Laura Ingalls Wilder gave, along with a chronology of the family, which contains a lot of details.
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