This was a read-aloud for Miya, as Mulan has already read the whole Little House series to herself. But Mulan never minds hearing books again, and was happy to listen too.
Before this, I had never read any of the books in the series. But I had certainly heard about them often enough — it seems like entry into the homeschooling community requires reading the series! But alongside hearing from many Little House fans, I had also heard from the occasional critic, whose comments suggested that too much racism made the books unworthy of being read. Sigh, why are so many of the old books racially questionable?!
So, I had to find out for myself, and reading aloud to Miya gave the perfect opportunity.
Little House in the Big Woods is a short (138 page) book, written in very simple language. Miya would have had no trouble at all reading it silently to herself. It tells the story of a year in the life of Laura, a 5-turning-6-year-old girl living “60 years ago” (published in 1932) in “the Big Woods of Wisconsin” in the USA.
Starting in autumn and finishing the following autumn, the story describes the seasonal changes of the everyday life of a young family living from farming, hunting, and tree-felling. For the most part the five of them (mother, father and three young girls) live on their own, and even trips to the grandparents’ or uncle’s houses relatively nearby are big events. The day-trip to the nearest town (with one store) was a huge event.
Reading about their daily life is indeed fascinating. It is a little bit Swiss Family Robinson-ish in the way that there are plenty of detailed descriptions of how they collected and prepared their food and clothing from their surrounding environment. But, at least in my opinion, it was much more interestingly written (maybe partly because it was much shorter and didn’t labour the point so much). It was also much more realistic!
Similar to the Swiss Family Robinson, Laura’s family relies a lot on killing the local wildlife to live. Laura’s Pa has a gun, which he takes with him almost every time he goes out. Partly this is because there are a lot of bears in the woods, and he needs it for safety. But partly it is to kill the animals for their meat and fur (fur is traded at the store in town). In the first autumn, we read about a lot of killings — especially bears and dear. Pa seems very matter-of-fact about these killings, though he emphasises that he doesn't kill during spring and summer because the animals have their babies to look after.
But interestingly, in the second autumn, described in the final chapter of the book, Pa apparently has a sudden change of heart and tells the family of how, when he was about to shoot, he saw the animals as beautiful and couldn’t pull the trigger. This creates an interesting development. Will Pa start killing again, or is this a permanent change? Do they need to kill animals to survive? Perhaps in the next book in the series we will learn more about Pa's ethical dilemma?
As far as the possible racism goes, I didn’t notice a lot in this book. Mulan tells me that there is more in later books, which means I may have to read more. In this book, mostly there was little opportunity for racism because the family lived on their own and they didn’t interact much with anyone else.
However, a little racism showed up in the songs that Pa sang while playing his fiddle. For example, in Chapter 5 Pa sang about “an old darkey” who “had no wool on the top of his head, in the place where the wool ought to grow.”
To me, the most questionable aspect of the book was the way Wilder got up on her hobby-horse a bit too much to emphasise how parents should beat their children to correct them. There was the incident with cousin Charley in Chapter 11, where Wilder was deeply critical of Uncle Henry for the way he was raising Charley. She described Charley as a spoilt, lazy boy, and connected it with the fact that Uncle Henry did not beat Charley when he was naughty. She maintained that a good beating ("tanning his hide") would have corrected his bad behaviour. There were also a few other situations where Pa beat his daughters to correct them.
The girls and I laughed at the unintentional irony in Chapter 10, when Pa beat Laura because Laura hit her elder sister Mary:
"You remember," Pa said, "I told you girls you must never strike each other."
Laura began, "But Mary said --"
"That makes no difference," said Pa, "It is what I say that you must mind."
Then he took down the strap from the wall, and he whipped Laura with the strap.These days, we know the evidence is clear regarding hitting children for correction. It doesn't work. And it makes children worse. Wilder was wrong. Pa was wrong.
I am thinking I should continue reading the second book in the series to Mulan and Miya. Will Pa continue in his ethical turn? Will they interact more with other people and will this bring out the racism I have heard about? I'll find out, and write more here.
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