Latest / Christians Reading Classics / Laura Ingalls Wilder - Little House on the Prairie with John Fry and LuElla D'Amico

Transcript

Laura Ingalls Wilder - Little House on the Prairie with John Fry and LuElla D'Amico · Christians Reading Classics

0:05
SPEAKER_02: Just two years after the conclusion of the American Civil War, a little girl was born in the Big Woods region of Wisconsin.
0:13
SPEAKER_02: Over 60 years later, in the 1930s, she and her country were worlds away from her childhood in many ways.
0:21
SPEAKER_02: She decided to write about it.
0:23
SPEAKER_02: When a publisher rejected her autobiographical manuscript, she reconfigured it instead into a series of books for children.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: The third of these books turns 90 this year.
0:35
SPEAKER_02: Little House on the Prairie.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: It was published in 1935.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: It opens as follows.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls, or very small babies, or perhaps not even born.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and baby Carrie left their little house in the big woods of Wisconsin.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: They drove away and left it lonely and empty among the big trees.
1:05
SPEAKER_02: And they never saw that little house again.
1:08
SPEAKER_02: They were going to Indian country.
1:12
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Christians Reading Classics, a new podcast from Mere Orthodoxy.
1:16
SPEAKER_02: I'm Nadia Williams, and today I am talking about Laura Ingalls-Wilder and especially Little House on the Prairie with two experts, one historian and a scholar of children's literature.
1:30
SPEAKER_02: Dr.
1:30
SPEAKER_02: John Fry is professor of history and dean of faculty at Trinity Christian College.
1:36
SPEAKER_02: He is the author most recently of A Prairie Faith: The Religious Life of Laura Ingalls-Wilder, published by Erdmans.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: Dr.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: Luella Domico is Associate Professor of English at the University of the Incarnate Ward and a prolific writer and essayist.
1:54
SPEAKER_02: Her next book, Wondrous Reading and Contering the Catholic Faith in Children's Literature, is coming from Cascade Press later this year.
2:04
SPEAKER_02: So thank you both so much for being here.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great to be here.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you so much for having us, Nadi.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited to talk about Little House.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
2:15
SPEAKER_02: You guys, you bring different dimensions of insights to this.
2:19
SPEAKER_02: So let's delve in.
2:22
SPEAKER_02: But first, kind of a broader question.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: So this season of the podcast focuses on literary classics with a significant anniversary this year.
2:30
SPEAKER_02: So I want to open with this more abstract question before we get to Little House on the Prairie in particular.
2:36
SPEAKER_02: What is a classic?
2:38
SPEAKER_02: Like, is it enough that we're still reading this book 90 years after publication?
2:42
SPEAKER_02: Or what other criteria would you add, especially as we consider what makes for a classic of children's literature specifically?
2:50
SPEAKER_01: Thinking about children's literature, uh, I feel like there is this distinctive way of classifying classic children's literature.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: And I think it does have this sort of like instructive tone where first it comes from adults, right?
3:08
SPEAKER_01: We are writing it and you expect that there is going to be this way that we are formed.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: But also there's this nostalgic quality that when we think about the literature that formed us as adults, we'll often go back and we'll say, right, I I love this book.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: And in a way, these are the books that form us into adult readers.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: And it formed who we become as people.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: So it's this sort of double, double moment, right?
3:38
SPEAKER_01: This adults writing books for children that whether or not right they're they're thinking about it in those ways, they always are going to have this moral component to them, right?
3:50
SPEAKER_01: Because children are becoming their moral selves, right?
3:54
SPEAKER_01: They're they're becoming in some way.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: And then also as adults sort of look back and look back at those books, there's this connective to this younger self and like, who was I?
4:06
SPEAKER_01: Who am I now?
4:07
SPEAKER_01: And am I still that self who who I was then?
4:10
SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a sort of community moment too.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, because we can think think about Little House in this way, right?
4:16
SPEAKER_01: You talk about Little House, and there's this like, oh, do you remember this?
4:20
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember reading this as a kid?
4:22
SPEAKER_01: And if it's not Little House, there's another book that we can usually turn to and say, right, do you still have that nostalgia for it?
4:30
SPEAKER_01: And if not, what changed?
4:32
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what ends up making a children's book a classic.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: If it's one of those books who we could have uh as a sort of or or that we have as a sort of moral touchstone.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: No, that's that's super.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've I've spoken to a lot of uh women who have read grew up reading the Little House books.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: So there's a great conference, it's actually called Laura Palooza.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Um I love it.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: It comes around every several years, and I missed it this year.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh, you know, it's it's sort of a combination of uh researchers, professional and amateur, and sort of fan event, uh, and it moves around.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: But uh there's a lot of women that you know, older women, women my age, uh, who uh grew up reading it and identifying with Laura, and then talk about reading it to uh their children and identifying with Ma, with the uh you know, the mother character in the book.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, so that that speaks to the staying power.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: The other thing that I was thinking about as far as uh you know it being a classic is uh classics tend to speak to people in different cultures and not just to people in different times.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, little house books have been translated into dozens of languages.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh the first language they were published, you know, translated into was actually Japanese after World War II because the um because the United States occupation of Japan wanted them to read good American books about how to be self-reliant uh and modern.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: And um, but actually Japanese people embrace them because they describe realities that Japanese people after World War II were experiencing: privation, struggles, things like that.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: And it and they've been rather wildly popular for much of the 20th century, still are in some ways in Japan.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, so at one of the Laura, also one of the Laura Palooza uh events I went to, I sat down for lunch next to a young woman who was wearing a bonnet um and said, uh, where are you from?
6:40
SPEAKER_00: It turns out that she was from Denmark and grew up reading the Little House books in Danish and uh had come to America to visit the Little House sites and um and come to the conference.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, I think it speaks to all kinds of different cultures as well as uh, you know, all kinds of different times.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and I guess maybe the last thing is that I think these books I found that they're it you can read them multiple times.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh there's some novels that you read once and uh you don't really have to read them again, but classics kind of reward uh additional readings.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh when you're at a different point in your life, you you notice different things.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: When you read them with different people, you notice different things.
7:25
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love that.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: Both of those definitions.
7:27
SPEAKER_02: And um so both the formational aspect that uh Loella, you brought up and the idea that this translates across time and culture, um, which is funny because I didn't grow up reading these books.
7:40
SPEAKER_02: I didn't grow up in the US.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: So I read them as an adult.
7:44
SPEAKER_02: And then more recently, my husband um insisted on reading these books to our six-year-old daughter.
7:51
SPEAKER_02: And of course, she loved them.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: But for my husband, it was like, this is what you read to a little girl, right?
7:57
SPEAKER_02: Like books about girls, which is exactly what she loves.
8:01
SPEAKER_02: She's always asking for books about girls.
8:04
SPEAKER_02: And even though those girls had a very different experience, she could relate to that.
8:09
SPEAKER_02: We actually got her um little house on the prairie um paper dolls for Christmas.
8:16
SPEAKER_02: Um, and she just really enjoyed that.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: Um, Dowdy, I want to add something real quick.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: So I actually didn't read Little House either growing up.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I study, I study girls' literature, it's sort of my main thing.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: But my husband grew up in Oklahoma, and this is the the only girls' books that he read.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: So his, I guess his mom read them to him, his grandmother had read them to his mom.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: And so he was obsessed, sort of like I guess your husband was.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: He was like, we have to read the little house books with with you know our kids.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: So we are making our way through all of the little house books, and I've read them for him, and he's like, we have to make a literary pilgrimage um to go see the little house as soon as possible.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: So this is like his big plan.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: And we have a huge um poster of a saying from Laura Ingleswilder as soon as you walk into the house because it's so ingrained into who he is and like his idea of the American consciousness.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, and right, he is not a reader in general, right?
9:21
SPEAKER_01: And so I find it really interesting that there is this idea um of like this girl's book that he is sort of picked up on, right?
9:29
SPEAKER_01: His family has sort of seen it as part of their ethos, um, like whether or not right you are a little girl.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: But my um my daughter loves them.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: Like she is sort of like like your like yours, it sounds like, where she has picked it up, and it's one of the few books that she just really, really loves as well.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: And now we read them together.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: Continues on a class.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: I love this.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: That's all fascinating because so here we're all talking about ourselves and our spouses.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, I I did not read them growing up either.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: I I grew up on a farm in western Pennsylvania, but it was just my brother and me, there's too much testosterone in the house.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: Um but my wife grew up on a small town in eastern Pennsylvania and uh and read them multiple times.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: So when we got married, she got me to read them.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: We uh read them together, we read out loud to each other, and I loved them, and uh have been doing research on Horngold's Wilder pretty much ever since, for the last 30 years, more or less.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: Um and uh we read them to our kids uh when they were little, and none of our kids got all that interested in them.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh tragically for me.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: So I have a daughter and three sons.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: So once again, it might be too much testosterone.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: But even my daughter, well, she she reads other kinds of fiction.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, I haven't been able to get her to go back.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Even though she became a teacher, I said, you know, you need to read these last two books about her becoming a teacher, and it hasn't worked.
11:00
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
11:01
SPEAKER_02: So, kind of that line between what is children's literature and what is like literature for every age or adults.
11:08
SPEAKER_02: And it seems like all of us came to these books as adults.
11:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, let's start with some brief historical background.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: Who was Laura Ingalls-Wilder?
11:19
SPEAKER_02: And kind of in broad brush strokes, what was her family's story and just how typical was her life for late 19th and um early 20th century?
11:28
SPEAKER_02: I guess, John, this is the question, like just for you to put you on the spot first.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no problem.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I could do that.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you already mentioned uh she was born two years after the end of the Civil War, Laura Ingalls uh in western Wisconsin in a log cabin.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh, grew up in the upper Midwest.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: So uh her family lived in Wisconsin and Minnesota, uh a little under a year in Iowa, and then in Dakota Territory, which later became South Dakota, um, with about a year and a half in southeastern Kansas.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that year and a half in Kansas is uh what Little House on the Prairie is about.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh she married Almanza Wilder, who was uh a homesteader in South Dakota in 1885.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: Um they had a daughter named Rose the next year.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: Um they tried to get their own homestead uh in uh Dakota for the next four years, but ultimately failed.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: They had to move to town, they faced drought, um other family debt, uh other kind of bad weather, tragic circumstances.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: Um in 1894, uh Lauren Almanzo and Rose moved to a farm in the Ozarks uh in south central Missouri, where they lived basically the rest of their lives.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: Lauren Almanzo lived the rest of their lives.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: Elmanzo died in 1949.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: Um Laura died in 1957, which was several weeks past her 90th birthday.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: Um you already sort of also mentioned it was in uh the late 20s that uh, well, I'll say Laura uh ended up writing for a farm newspaper in Missouri between 1911 and 1925.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Rose had become a novelist and a journalist and encouraged Laura to write in order to make money for the homestead.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh in the late 20s, she wrote this memoir called Pioneer Girl, which they were not able to publish, but uh took some of the stories out of it to create Little House in the Big Woods.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: And uh then over the next uh 11 years, between 1932, Little House in the Big Woods came out in 1932.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh the other seven Little House books were published uh uh between 1932 and 1943.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh seven are about her childhood, and their you know, stories are taken from Pioneer Girl.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, and one is about Elmanzo's childhood, that's Farmer Boy.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I guess here I'll I'll take a swing at typical.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's always difficult when you ask a historian how whether an individual's life was typical for a farm a time period.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: The answer is almost always yes and no.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, but there actually are a number of ways that her life was pretty typical.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh her family moved a lot of times.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: That was not uncommon in the late 1800s.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, they were moving because of economic opportunities.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there are a lot of families struggling with doing market agriculture on small plots in the upper Midwest.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Um she had a pretty typical education in small town schools.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh she had two children, Rose and a son who died before he was a month old.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh losing a child before age five was uh pretty common in the late 1800s.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh having only two children was less common.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: We don't know if that was a decision or if she was unable to have kids.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: Um and I think her and Almanzo's uh adult life in the Ozarks trying to make a living on a small farm is is fairly typical for that region of the country as well.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Um there are other women who who wrote different types of things in order to make extra money, um, but not very many wrote books that became as wildly popular as the Little House books did in the in the 20th century.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: Um and finally she raised a daughter who ended up being very different than she was, which I think is pretty common.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: Um But uh what was striking is that the two of them collaborated to make the Little House books as good as they are.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: That's fascinating.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: And I guess, yeah, as historians like we will say, there's no such thing as average, but at the same time, certain trends affect us all.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: But I was looking at reading some more of her biography as like I was preparing for the uh for this.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about her relationship with her daughter and how it feels in some ways just so real, right?
16:06
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you are thinking about uh right how she raised someone who was so different from her.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: And in the books, we have this uh we have the story of these sisters that also feels very real.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, sort of thinking about this from just sort of a literary lens.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: I think what's so distinctive about the books is that she does tell about all of these hardships, all of this moving that is quite typical of the prairie life.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: But then she's able to add this family element to it that makes you feel as if you are there with them, that you are living all of these hardships.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: And they are so difficult.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, when when locusts come and eat their crops, when their houses burn down.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was reading the story with my children and they have to leave and then their house is gone.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is it is it's hard stories to tell.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: But then at the same time, right, I we've had to leave, and I'm sure that like other like listeners have had to have experiences when you've had to move, right?
17:16
SPEAKER_01: Or when friends have maybe moved away from you.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: And I think these are experiences that are not only common at this period, right?
17:24
SPEAKER_01: The end of the the eight, um, the end of the 19th and early 20th century, uh, early um the 20th century, but also sort of common to all of our lives.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's really interesting.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: But it's also interesting as I was thinking about her lifespan to think about how much that it covered, right?
17:41
SPEAKER_01: That she goes from pioneer woman to farmer.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: And then at the end, she's in this like technological age.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty amazing to think of all of this time span, and then to think of all of us on this podcast right now, and then to think of like us in this era of AI, and to think of like our time span and all of like that we have gone through.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: And you can see this happening, this time span going forth in these books, right?
18:11
SPEAKER_01: That she is like out on the prairie living this pioneer life, and then somehow she's becoming a best-selling author, telling about these experiences that seem so remote, but she's living a life that's very similar to many of ours by the time that she's writing these books, right?
18:31
SPEAKER_01: She's you know, talking and having a TV show and doing all of these things, right?
18:36
SPEAKER_01: Pretty, pretty closely afterwards, right?
18:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's kind of an amazing experience that is seems remote, but is also sort of similar to us in a in a lot of ways.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: So it reveals the history, and I think it also reveals something about all of us at the same time.
18:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's such a good point.
18:55
SPEAKER_02: I mean, here she is born two years after the Civil War, and she lives um over a decade past World War II.
19:02
SPEAKER_02: It's everything.
19:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is crazy.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: I think I saw something that said, right, she's you know, living on the prairie, and then at the end she uh she's able to ride on an airplane.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's pretty amazing.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Mind-blowing.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Yep, yeah.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: In 1954, she flew to see uh Rose, who was living in Connecticut.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, from the covered wagon to to the airflame.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, just to say, you know, one of the, you know, and it's one of the wonderful things about the books is how direct the prose is.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: It just describes exactly how things were.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, one thing that's a little bit jarring is that in fact the the Little House books are children's fiction.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, Laura and and Rose in the collaboration did change things.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: They combined characters, they shaped the narrative in all kinds of ways for different reasons.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: And so um, it becomes jarring if you do read the Little House books and then start doing historical research, you think, oh, that's not exactly how it went.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: And I find myself sort of bursting people's bubbles at times, and I try to do it.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I mean, I'm not uh nasty about it or anything, but it's like, well, you know, that's uh one of the uh uh occupational hazards.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I guess the trick.
20:21
SPEAKER_02: So is this fiction?
20:23
SPEAKER_02: Is this nonfiction?
20:24
SPEAKER_02: And I guess that's what happens when you use your life as the basis.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: And I experienced that myself when I read the books, I loved them, and then I started doing research, and I thought, wait, wait a second, this doesn't quite work.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: And you sort of try to fit them together for a while, and then you realize, oh no, actually, nope, these are kind of in some ways different worlds.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: There's the world that the historical uh Laura lived in, and there's the world of the books, and then actually then there's the world of the TV show, which is made in the 70s, which is uh really the world of Michael Landon.
20:58
SPEAKER_02: So a whole another world.
20:59
SPEAKER_02: Well, let's delve specifically into Little House on the Prairie.
21:03
SPEAKER_02: And I guess without giving away too many details or the ending for read uh for listeners who might not have read it yet, what is the general story and what stands out to you on reading and rereading?
21:15
SPEAKER_02: Because John, you mentioned the significance of classics as books we reread.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: So I want to hear you guys.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: So the general story is you have uh you have Laura and her two sisters who go out in search of um in search of finding a homestead.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: I feel like John sort of uh mentioned this, and they go from uh Wisconsin to Kansas, and they are sort of moving along the prairie to find uh to find different places to live and figure out how are they going to survive.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: It really is, and it's right, so I'm focusing on the children, right?
21:56
SPEAKER_01: Because it's a children's book, but in many ways, right, it's also about their Their parents, right?
22:01
SPEAKER_01: It's about their family lives, about Pa and Ma who sort of shape them into characters.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: There are eight books in the series that tell different episodes.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: The first one really is about their, Phil, it's sort of about their gardening, their farming life, and then they then they move.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: And each one tells sort of a different, a different encounter with uh with life, um, life on the prairie.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: Um uh my son's favorite, um, which I have next to me is um about um uh is about a boy.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: Um it's it's called Farmer Boy, so it's about about his life.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: Um and I they there's different episodes in each of their lives, and it sort of goes goes through this trajectory.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: I think that spoiler free about as spoiler-free as you can get.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know, Little House on the Prairie itself is basically a year in the life.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh you know, Morris starts sort of in the late summer, it rolls into the late spring of the next year.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, they're homesteading in Indian territory.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: It just says they were going to Indian territory.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: Um and so it's Paw and Ma and Laura and Mary and Carrie, and uh they choose a site, they build a log cabin, uh, you know, they trap animals for furs, dig a well, plant crops, interact with their neighbors, interact with the indigenous peoples who are there.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Um and everything is told from the point of view of Laura, who is about five years old, in uh in the book.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: Um you know, there's these really detailed descriptions of the prairie, how their house was built, how food is prepared.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: Good food.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: Always good food.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, yeah.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, farmer boy has tons of food.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, and then there's stories about cowboys going to Fort Dodge and the family getting malaria, and uh, you know, a prairie fire and uh local powwow, uh including multiple American Indian groups, uh, all of these sort of, you know, so it's episodic, but it's also sort of year in the life.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, this is what it was like it feels like an adventure and that you're adventuring along with them, as if you are a pioneer along with them each year.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: It's there is that glamour of pioneers.
24:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm also reminded of James Fenimer Cooper's novels, which are, I guess, for slightly older age, but I read those as a kid, and those very much like had that adventuring element.
24:47
SPEAKER_02: It's like the glamour of the adventure, and then you think, you know, maybe malaria is not so glamorous.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, I do think that is this children's element that makes these novels so interesting, right?
24:59
SPEAKER_01: John was talking about the editing process of that, and you feel that in the children's element, right?
25:06
SPEAKER_01: That it's as she's writing it, and then right, Rose is helping her edit it, right?
25:12
SPEAKER_01: These are hard things that she's talking about.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: And if they were adult novels, I think they would read much differently, and maybe those editing decisions would have been different, but because their novels, at least, and I and I think maybe to be read with children, maybe not even for like primarily children only, there is this idea of this like spirit of right, there is there is some goodness here, right?
25:42
SPEAKER_01: We are going to be able to deal with whatever happens, right?
25:45
SPEAKER_01: Locus come, but okay, we'll be able to rebuild next year.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: There will be another story next year, and that story will begin in the same sort of way that you know, right?
25:55
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna begin at the, you know, in this way there will be a Christmas, be a Christmas moment, and then we'll end and then we'll begin again.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, and you begin to sort of expect this sort of rebirth, right?
26:06
SPEAKER_01: Almost right.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is, I think there is a Christian ethos here, right?
26:11
SPEAKER_01: But there is a sort of idea of renewal that happens each time, right?
26:14
SPEAKER_01: You expect the tragedy, and there were so many tragedies that actually happened in her own life.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that she is writing it in this way, right?
26:24
SPEAKER_01: She's going back and looking back at her life and thinking, right, I have overcome so much.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: And I am thinking about my parents.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: I am thinking about my dad and his fiddling, and these are in many ways good experiences, even though it was such a hard time.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: And I think we all might rewrite and re-envision our childhoods in a lot of ways, like this, as we are thinking about our past, no matter how difficult they might have been.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: No, you're absolutely right.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it at the end of the chapter, it's like this was a chapter that actually described that perhaps they were all going to die of malaria.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't feel that heavy.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: It's completely told from the point of view of a child what it might have been like.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, this is uh, and you feel when when Pa goes to town, he goes to town 40 miles away from the home, it was actually not that far.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: But uh he goes 40, it's gonna take him two days to get there and two days to get back.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: You feel, you know, it's all it's all girls in the house.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: What's gonna happen if Pa doesn't come back?
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, but then at the end, you think, uh, well, of course Pa was gonna come back.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: That's you know, it it doesn't feel it it feels bad, but it doesn't feel like you know, as as as awful as it might.
27:38
SPEAKER_02: I'm reminded of children's go ahead, Loella.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was thinking about you mentioning sort of delving into the um like delving into the actual records, right?
27:48
SPEAKER_01: Once you're doing that, right, you don't have that sense, right?
27:51
SPEAKER_01: That that narrative sense, right, that we know from stories, right?
27:54
SPEAKER_01: That that right, of course, right, in the children's story, we know they're gonna come back, right?
27:59
SPEAKER_01: But right, as they're actually living it, they didn't know this, right?
28:03
SPEAKER_01: And so it is probably a much different thing, right?
28:06
SPEAKER_01: You are kind of disabusing just in going in the archives, right?
28:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, because as humans, often, right, we don't have that that knowledge that, yeah, sure, my dad's gonna come back after he does this, especially in the right, when they're out on the territories.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, we know that many people did not come back.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: That is part of that story that is simply in American history.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: Many people died.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: That that is the case.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, she was very lucky in that her dad came back.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, but in here it just seems like, oh, of course, right?
28:42
SPEAKER_01: They're you know, they're having these encounters and they're scary.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: And okay, yeah, that's just part of the story.
28:49
SPEAKER_02: It is reassuring in a way, like, and I was reminded the parallel to classic um fairy tales for children, the idea that like there's scary monsters out there, like there's really awful stuff that happens, and it generally works out okay.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: Um, and it almost seems like she leans into this ethos here that like really awful things happen, but you know, and then we move on.
29:11
SPEAKER_02: And um, maybe it's not happily ever after, but in real life, happily ever after is sort of adjusted.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: I wrote down a quote from Little House in the Big Woods.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: It it begins the uh it begins the entire story.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: She says, Once upon a time, 60 years ago, a little girl lived in the big woods of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs, right?
29:33
SPEAKER_01: She actually begins it as a fairy tale.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: So it sounds like it begins once upon a time, right?
29:39
SPEAKER_01: It sounds as if we're starting with Hansel and Gretel, right?
29:42
SPEAKER_01: That's once upon a time, right?
29:44
SPEAKER_01: There's a log cabin woods, a log cabin, right?
29:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, that's how she's describing America, right?
29:52
SPEAKER_01: It sounds as if it is a fairy tale, even though it is her real life, and there are all of these tragedies that befell her.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: And there are tragedies in the book, but she's like, no, we know because it begins with the once upon a time that she's gonna encounter the natives and it's gonna be scary that that her pa's gonna come back, and it it it will turn out okay.
30:17
SPEAKER_02: It will, and girls are the heroes, yes.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: Yep, and and you know, there's all kinds of aspects of uh fairy tales in Little House in the Big Woods.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: There, you know, some of the stories of her and her ma.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: Um uh some scholars have done some some neat stuff with that, Wilder Scholars.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh it's there's aspects of that in Little House in the Prairie, too.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: Some of the later Little House books become more sort of um realistic uh and and more like young adult fiction than they are, you know, sort of children's fairy tale fiction.
30:49
SPEAKER_02: So, what advice would you give first-time readers coming to this particular book and really this series?
30:54
SPEAKER_02: We've kind of touched upon this already, but any specific advice for first-time readers?
30:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll get I'll go first.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: So, first I think it, and we've already sort of alluded to this already, it helps if you read all of the books in order.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: It helps if you read Little House in the Big Woods before you read Little House in a Prairie, because then you know the characters.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: I think it also helps if you read, you know, so Little House in the Big Woods, and then Farmer Boy is the second one, and then Little House in a Prairie.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, for a while I think Harper's was actually having Little House in the Big Woods and then Little House in a Prairie.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh I that's not the order in which they wrote them, and I don't think it's as good that way.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, the other thing is I think you have to realize people need to realize that these uh are books that were written 90 years ago, the events happened 150 years ago, people are not going to think and talk and act the way we think and talk and act today, um, especially as it applies to cultural differences, particularly uh in relation to indigenous peoples.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: Um some of the descriptions of the Osage in the book are shocking to our sensibilities.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: Um I I taught an honors class at Trinity.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh it was actually eight years ago, but uh you know, for so these students are 25 years younger than me.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: Um they uh and that that was even before 2020, and kind of the changes to how people think about racial and cultural differences that came with the pandemic and protests.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: Um they were shocked and dismayed by some of the things that people say about Indians in the book.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I always tell my students this is the promise of reading stories from other times and other places.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: You learn that people in the past didn't think the way that we do.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and we can try to understand some of the reasons why they thought that way, even though we don't agree with them.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's one of the hopes for all of my history courses that students will come to understand people in the past who don't think the way they do.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that'll help them to understand people today who don't think the way they do.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree with John having those moments, especially those moments of encounter being spaces where you can open up conversations and uh sort of having those discussions around it because it is, I mean, it is a historical book.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: It's an old book, and to not be thinking, right, while I'm reading Little House on the Prairie, it's a classic, and therefore it will read exactly like a book written in 2025 will read.
33:21
SPEAKER_01: It's it's not going to, right?
33:23
SPEAKER_01: And Laura Ingalls Wilder was writing right about her past, right, which was right at the 19th century, right?
33:30
SPEAKER_01: She as right as Nadia mentioned, right?
33:33
SPEAKER_01: She was a child of the 1860s, right?
33:36
SPEAKER_01: That is that is a long time from today.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: And so she's going to have ideas and dispositions from the 1860s.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: So we ought to sort of keep that in mind as we are reading it.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, beyond that, I did ask my daughter, who's uh reading through uh the little house books now, what she would give uh other readers, what advice she would give them.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: And she said that you ought to read it with your family because sometimes they can get a little slow, that they are cozy books, and for that, uh that means that sometimes she falls asleep during them.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so it's good to have, she's nine.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, so that means it's good to have an adult around um to help you with some of the bigger reads for the bigger words.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I would say to take them, you know, slowly.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, I do think uh so John was mentioning that uh that they uh you know they start sort of at a at a lower level and get higher.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: I think that's purposeful.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: Like we talk about this with the Harry Potter series, um, right?
34:37
SPEAKER_01: That you know, you have something that's written for younger audiences and sort of grows up with you.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: So I think ideally that you don't binge them.
34:45
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that they're they're they're binging books.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: It's not like a Netflix show that you read one and then you read it as a a year, right?
34:53
SPEAKER_01: And then you read another one the next year, and ideally they kind of grow with you.
34:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe not like if you're an adult, right?
35:00
SPEAKER_01: That may not matter.
35:01
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're ready to binge, maybe you are high-minded in that way and you might not fall asleep in the way that my daughter thinks of it as a cozy book.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think if you're reading it with a family or group or something like that, that you might take it year by year.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: So that way you kind of grow up along with the characters, and you're able to sort of have those discussions a little bit more slowly, too.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, and that I do think it's important, as John mentioned, to pause and have the discussions because there are moments of encounter, there are difficult things, they do go through traumatic events.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think it's important to say, hey, these things have happened.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: There is this sort of gloss on them.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: How are you, how are you sort of reacting to this if you're reading it with children?
35:48
SPEAKER_01: And right, if you're reading it with anyone else, I think it's a nice, um, a nice thing to have as a discussion.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: I certainly write talking about or talking with my husband about how much these like this series uh sort of shaped his life.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: It was it was nice to sort of have this discussion with him too.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: So I think all of all of those ways are good approaches to it.
36:11
SPEAKER_02: I like that the idea of books that are made for sharing specifically, that they're richer if you read it with others.
36:21
SPEAKER_02: Well, um well, speaking of read, I mean, we talked about reading, but let's talk about the writing aspect of it.
36:28
SPEAKER_02: So, what were Laura Ingalls Wilder's reasons for writing these books like 60 some years after her childhood?
36:38
SPEAKER_02: Did she and did she think about children's literature as a distinct category as she got into them?
36:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you know, why that Laura wrote the books is complicated.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: Um in several public speeches, Laura gave a different version of how the books were written than what we have been talking about, right?
36:57
SPEAKER_00: She didn't mention the adult memoir that she tried to get published.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: She said uh things like, I thought that the stories my father told me were too good to be lost, and so I wrote Little House in the Big Woods.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: And then the kids wanted more stories, so I wrote Farmer Boy, and then I wrote Little House in the Prairie.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: Um and I'm I'm sure that part of her motivation was keeping these stories alive, telling the stories of um her childhood.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, but there's also plenty of evidence that she wrote because they needed money.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: Um during the 20s, uh, Rose had gotten them to invest some of their money with her investment, um, her Wall Street uh stock investment company, which they both lost in the crash in the 29 and the years afterwards.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: And so they're looking for ways to make money.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's actually only with the publication of the first several Little House books, and they started getting royalty payments because they were you know big sellers very quickly, that Laura and Elmanzo were financially stable.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's another reason.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think actually, more broadly, everything that Laura wrote for the farm newspaper initially, uh several articles she wrote for national magazines, her memoir, and ultimately the little house books was written to help others live uh better and more happy lives and to become better people.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: Um and so, you know, Luella mentioned the kind of moral aspect of these.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: That's part of what she was trying to do in some ways for children and in some ways for adults too.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm I'm pretty sure Laura did see children's literature as a distinct category.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: Rose certainly did.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: Rose um never wanted to write children's fiction, she thought it was sort of inferior to the adult fiction that she was writing for national magazine, serial fiction that then got turned into books.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: Um Rose initially told Laura that one couldn't make any money writing children's fiction, which she was wrong about.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: Um the books were published by Harper's Children's Division.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: And as we've already mentioned, uh, you know, the the Laura understood that the books had to grow up with the fictional character Laura.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: Um the later books are basically young adult fiction.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: And it's my understanding that it was a couple decades before young adult fiction was sort of a well-established category in publishing.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so uh they they sort of made it up as they went along.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say we've been talking about the collaboration between Laura and Rose.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, Laura did write out drafts in uh longhand in pencil, and they're sometimes multiple drafts.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh she gave them the Rose, Rose typed them up, and then they discussed them.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: The first couple books, they're living on the farm together, and so they discussed them in person.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: Then uh Rose moved away, and so the discussions were done in letters, and we have some of those letters, so we can try and track some of that conversation about them.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: And then Rose typed a final draft and sent it to the publisher.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, Rose was not just an editor, she reorganized material, she turned descriptions into dialogue, she sometimes added entire scenes.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Um but the final product was actually better than both Laura's original manuscripts and pretty much anything, any of the short stories and books that Rose wrote herself.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: So together, they you know, the Little House books are uh are much better books than anything that either of them wrote by themselves.
40:34
SPEAKER_02: That's striking.
40:35
SPEAKER_02: And you know, like I I've never heard of Rose's writings.
40:40
SPEAKER_02: Like we're and obviously we read Laura Engels Wilder.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: And Rose was wildly popular in the 1920s and 30s.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, you know not a classic, I guess.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: But not a classic, no, and and I've read some of her stuff, and you know, it reads, you know, uh very, very time-bound, you know, it's very much sort of a 1920s or 30s book, and some of the some of the dialogue is, you know, it's just like, what?
41:09
SPEAKER_00: What this is just turgid, it's just not great writing.
41:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, but then somehow Rose, when she was working with Laura's original work, and then the discussion that they did made these books so good.
41:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for a long time, uh Laura Ingalls Wilder had uh she had a journal, um, she had a newspaper sort of advice column for farming, for like far like farmers, um, but mainly for women, so farming women.
41:39
SPEAKER_01: And so she would give advice.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, it was like a once-a-week column, um, and that was really, really popular.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: So she was doing this sort of regionally for a while, and then she began uh having this idea to write uh about right her life.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: And right, as as John mentioned, right, she like originally thought of it, right, as I'm gonna write this sort of memoir.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: And then she began to think, right, well, this isn't working right, this memoir isn't working.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: And she had uh her original I her original title for the first uh book was um uh when grandma was a little girl.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: Um so it was this idea of sort of it sounds more to me, again, like a memoir, right?
42:26
SPEAKER_01: Rather than I think this fairy tales a rendition of it, right?
42:30
SPEAKER_01: And I think it is this collaboration with Rose, who is thinking of right, how can we make this for a broader audience?
42:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, because Rose had lived in San Francisco for a while.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: She had worked with bigger publishers, she had written these sort of trade biographies, and I think she saw her mother's story in a sort of niche sort of world market that her mother had and thought, well, how can we make this broader for all of America?
43:01
SPEAKER_01: Not just this audience that my that my mom has built because she was talking like around um around Missouri, around Kansas, giving these sort of public lectures, right, about farm life, um, and about like how to think how to um how to sort of grasp um, I think of it as sort of like farm feminism, right?
43:24
SPEAKER_01: She uh she sort of famously did not take her um she she changed the she changed her wedding vows, right?
43:31
SPEAKER_01: She said that she refused to to say the obey uh command in her in her wedding vows, right?
43:37
SPEAKER_01: She talked about how there needed to be more um more uh equal rights for farm women, how they needed to work less time, right?
43:46
SPEAKER_01: So her column was a little bit spicy, right?
43:48
SPEAKER_01: It was interesting, right?
43:50
SPEAKER_01: And so her daughter saw this, right?
43:52
SPEAKER_01: That she's doing something interesting.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, and she was really proud of her sewing skills, right?
43:58
SPEAKER_01: So she's really interesting in the market.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: that she's in, but it's a it's a pretty regional farming market.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: And right, and her daughter comes in and is like, well, perhaps right, we can we can make this valuable in like a broader sense.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's that's when the idea of like how do we how do we take your ideas about passing these values about pioneering and the things that you really care about to a broader audience.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: And you know it seems like you're if you're going to instill values, maybe you do tell your stories to children, right?
44:34
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they even had the discussion.
44:35
SPEAKER_01: I think of this like idea I I think of it as often quaint.
44:39
SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes as scholars usually if you read about their relationship, uh you will read, I don't know, it seems like scholars are are kind of down on their relationship.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: I wish there were another way to say it.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: But I think of it as as a rather fruitful one.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: It seems like they came together and they decided right how can we work together to create something beautiful and they did right they they seemed to to really work together to create this series that seems to be really born of love.
45:10
SPEAKER_01: And it seems to be rooted in values that they both really care about or else they wouldn't have continued to do it for so long.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: And I I don't know I find it to be a a really fruitful beautiful collaborative relationship working with the things that they both they both sort of bring to the table.
45:30
SPEAKER_01: Rose from her marketing sort of literary background and then Laura from hers but her sort of more regional uh regional poll.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know I I like the idea of them working together and doing it as a mother-daughter pair.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: And I think it it adds to the story.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: And I think they were probably were thinking about um Laura talking to Rose and telling her these stories which obviously most kids resist when they are younger.
46:01
SPEAKER_01: But I suspect for anyone who has grown up as an adult and at some point said, man, I wish I had listened to my mom's stories you know at some point I think that perhaps that's the turn that we have in the little house books and that's what makes them so beautiful because how often do you hear that right?
46:21
SPEAKER_01: Like oh we need to write down these family stories and have them out in the world.
46:25
SPEAKER_01: And I think this is that done in this like blockbuster way that really hasn't been replicated in a way that that I know of that's like a real story.
46:34
SPEAKER_01: We have in a lot of fictional stories but I mean at least right now maybe y'all can think of another one but I can't think of another sort of like real story that's done in this way.
46:45
SPEAKER_01: Like maybe it's the closest but not it's still not quite quite the same.
46:51
SPEAKER_02: Well we've been talking a lot about the formational aspect of these books the moral angle which clearly was important uh for Laura so I want to ask you both um to talk a little bit more about her faith and how that keeps like uh coming up in the books but also affects how we read.
47:09
SPEAKER_02: So to start with John a question for you which is like probably the hardest question because you wrote a whole book about this very topic what was uh Laura Ingalls Wilder's uh theological background and in what ways do we see her faith come through in these books?
47:24
SPEAKER_00: Well thank you for the opportunity to plug the book uh it's a good book so it's thank thank you it it has been so fun to have it out in the world and talk to people who've read it um so uh a prairie faith is a biography of Laura that pays uh so it's a full biography that pays particular attention to her faith um Laura grew up in congregational churches in the upper Midwest and then she and Elmanzo attended uh local Methodist church in Missouri um although she and Elmanzo never became members of the Methodist church in Missouri it's hard exactly to um to tease out what what all that meant but it meant something um I I think that Laura was a committed Christian she attended church she read the Bible she uh she prayed um she was not an evangelical uh she's not a fundamentalist if you think about the early 20th century uh she also wasn't a liberal or a modernist uh you know the terms uh historians talk about in the early 20th century she was sort of a moderate Protestant and that was pretty typical for small towns uh in the Midwest um I I say in the book I think Christianity was important to her but it wasn't central to her life um I I think in many ways that comes through in a little house books Christianity is important for the fictional Engels family but it's not really central.
48:47
SPEAKER_00: It comes up in like one chapter in the first two books.
48:51
SPEAKER_00: You know the book my book also compares Laura's uh original manuscripts to later TypeScript copies that Rose had worked on to what was eventually published to try to track uh what Laura and Rose contributed to uh you know to the books and especially to the depiction of Christianity and God in the church.
49:11
SPEAKER_00: When they were writing the books in the 30s uh Rose had pretty much abandoned you know or rejected the church she was an agnostic um interestingly that Rose's contributions seem to point in two different directions there are sometimes that kind of neutral or sometimes you know even positive depictions in the original manuscript become more negative in the uh the books that ultimately get published um but at other times it seems that Rose is actually adding references to God and to the Bible and to Christian practices in uh the later uh drafts and final manuscripts which provided for a deeper engagement with Christianity um I will say that Little House in a Prairie is perhaps the Little House book that says the least about God and and faith.
50:01
SPEAKER_00: Other books describe Sunday observance and church attendance and Bible reading and prayer and Little House in a prairie doesn't have any of those things.
50:10
SPEAKER_00: It has Ma singing one hymn uh it has one mention of Providence and one reference to a Bible passage in a brief discussion between Laura and Pa about whether dogs go to heaven.
50:23
SPEAKER_01: But Little House in a prairie is sort of focused on other things right it's focused on on the wilderness it's focused on uh interactions with indigenous peoples and their neighbors well I have a follow-up kind of a related question for you Luella so how do you read this particular book keeping in mind your faith and your children's faith I mean you've been writing extensively on how um the books we read to our children cultivate their uh theological imagination so I think it's a book that's filled with virtues right so whether or not right it they're like explicit nods that say right this is now where Laura is praying and here is a biblical scripture right that that you can pull to um I do think that throughout here there are moments where you can point to and say well you see that you know that Laura is sacrificing.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: There's a moment in the book of give too many spoilers right but there's a moment in the book where uh Mary suffers uh from a really debilitating illness and uh and Laura has to help her and it really changes Laura's life for a while and she has to sacrifice and I can't remember right now whether God is invoked during this or if Pa I do remember Pa having a discussion with Laura about how she kind of needs to to step up for the family.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: I can't remember as I'm going back if if he says right the Lord says right that you must sacrifice right John's shaking his head right can see he doesn't because that's just not how the series goes right sorry but but certainly right after reading that discussion after reading that right I can imagine right that I could have a discussion with my daughter and say um hey right this right is a moment where we can see right that they're they're living out Christian values right that Laura is making is making a sacrifice and you can see that they're they're living this out right it might not be explicitly stated in the book um because I think in some ways this might make it a worse book right it might make it a little annoying um I'm thinking of certain people I know no no no one on this podcast but just certain people right I'm imagining other people might know people like this you're like please okay right we get it you are better than I am but right living the the tenets out of faith right is one way that you evangelize that you show the Christian faith right and I think making those sort of implicit moments um in really good books like this explicit is one way to to carry on the faith to our children and to make sure that that it's clear so it's not necessarily saying that each book has to has to have it right there and like okay and now right but if we you know and now it says here but we can actually see that as Christians read it in the text and then have those discussions.
53:29
SPEAKER_01: In the same way we might say ooh right she she has not said this about the OSH natives in the right way maybe we should have that discussion we can say when she has had said something really good and really virtuous and I think both of those discussions um are discussions that we ought to to point out both the I mean that's what discernment is as a Christian right both the good and and the bad I like that and perhaps that's what makes this book a classic that it's um that it's able to appeal to a variety of readers in this way.
54:07
SPEAKER_00: No I I agree completely I mean the the mor the the morals here are taught by in the stories it's not preachy.
54:15
SPEAKER_00: And um and in some ways uh you know I think partially that's why it can appeal to so many you know it appeals to some Christian people very very deeply and it appeals to all kinds of people who are not Christians at all very very deeply because that it's uh it's the power of the stories that are communicating the uh the virtues so as we conclude I have a final question for you kind of building on everything we talked about in a way but what classic book whether fiction or nonfiction do you wish you had written and why oh mine's easy I feel like Nadia you probably already know mine mine is little women um I wish that I had written Little Women I feel like it's very akin to Little House and that it is um a classic because of word of mouth um it was not in the canonical like that you know the the things that make it into literature classrooms because professors deemed it as something that should be in literature classrooms.
55:20
SPEAKER_01: And that's the same thing that uh we have with Little House.
55:23
SPEAKER_01: And in fact I don't know if Little House is normally taught in anything except children's literature classrooms and it's still sort of uh one of those books that is sort of uh contested in uh in children's literature classrooms for all sorts of reasons.
55:38
SPEAKER_01: Um but Little Women is a book that made it into the canon because women passed it down from one generation to the next because of word of mouth in a way right that we all sort of came to Little House by word of mouth.
55:52
SPEAKER_01: And I love Little Women because it represents really good female relationships and family relationships, which is the same thing that I think that we have in Little House.
56:04
SPEAKER_01: And I love that so many women connect with it over the years in so many different ways.
56:10
SPEAKER_01: Every time I teach it students who haven't read it will say things like oh right I see my sister in this right or I see my relationship with my friends in this or I see my mom in this and so I wish right that I could write something like that where upon reading it everyone is like oh right I see this in it and I've connected it in this way and I want to give it to someone else because that's always this other thing that happens right this like I read it I've loved it I've connected with it and now I want to give it to someone else and share this experience with them because like Little House right which seems like a sharing book Little Women is a sharing book and that's what the best books are to me those books that you're like oh I want to share it and talk about it with someone else because it's a gift to the world.
56:59
SPEAKER_01: So that's that would be the one that I wish that I could write little women.
57:03
SPEAKER_00: Well so you know this is a great question.
57:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a difficult question.
57:08
SPEAKER_00: At first I was just thinking about what my favorite books are um but I don't know that I wish that I had written those.
57:15
SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine writing fiction for one thing.
57:18
SPEAKER_00: I just that's not what I do.
57:20
SPEAKER_00: So I don't think that I wish that I had written the screw tape letters or the Lord of the rings which are probably my you know two favorite books.
57:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say I wish I had written uh a book by historian Alan Gelzo.
57:34
SPEAKER_00: It's called Abraham Lincoln Redeemer President um I've long been fascinated by Abraham Lincoln's life and uh a couple times I've thought I've you know I've wondered if I might be able to write something about Lincoln but there's just too much to read and I have too many other things to do.
57:53
SPEAKER_00: So there's no way that I could actually do it.
57:55
SPEAKER_00: And Gelzo's book is excellent.
57:57
SPEAKER_02: I love it.
57:58
SPEAKER_02: Well thank you both so much.
58:00
SPEAKER_01: I have one more thing to say yes the other book I wish that I had written is called Cultural Christians in the early church because it is one of my favorite books ever and is also a gift to the world by Nadia Williams an amazing book that I plan to read with my children in just a couple of years because they will be old enough and you should too just saying well thank you well thank you both so much we're gonna stop here.
58:29
SPEAKER_02: Super thanks thank you both this was so fun.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: That was great thank you so much for having us