Little Town on the Prairie, while continuing Laura Ingalls Wilder's always interesting and entertaining autobiographical story, excels at portraying a community coming to life. The few businesses in the town of De Smet, South Dakota described in the last book in the series have now become a full-blown town, with homesteading settlers coming from far and wide. A church is built, community societies are created and the school is getting too small for its students. Western culture is forged in the isolated town, a sign that its residents are prosperous enough to have free time for pleasure. (A minstrel show Pa Ingalls takes part in is cringe-worthy, to be sure, but it's faithful to what transpired.) It's also interesting to see teenagers from the 19th century so conscious of fashions, new technologies and jealousy-inducing trends.
Laura, meanwhile, is approaching adulthood, striving for a teaching certificate so as to earn money to keep her blind sister, Mary, in college. Laura's younger sisters, Carrie and Grace, also begin to come into their own, and her future husband, Almanzo Wilder, is already attempting to court her (though she doesn't seem to realize it).
This isn't the most dramatic book of the series, but a fine addition to it.
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