Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Sunday, August 14, 2022
Thursday, December 30, 2021
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Recently Read: Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
What a wonderful, complex book. Little House on the Prairie covers nearly a year when the Ingalls family left their home in Wisconsin to build a new house and life on the Indian territory plains of Kansas. The hardships and beauties of such a life are told vividly. Despite some critic's misgivings about Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter's editing input into the creation of the books, the autobiographical stories told here ring true, poignant, memorable and sad. Children will be reading and learning from this book for a hundred years.
How tragic and ridiculous it is that the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, has removed Wilder’s name from her own award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award - primarily due to a conversation in the book wherein a racist neighbor expresses a racist remark about Native Americans. These particular ALA justice warriors must believe the primary object of children's literature is to coddle, mollify, pamper and protect children from any viewpoint - even a fictionalized viewpoint - which doesn't make them feel good about their race/gender/age/whatever. History and our present reality is much more complex and nuanced, though, as today's children will soon realize when they enter the adult world. And then there's the true cliche, 'Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.', which makes it very important for young readers to learn about past racial injustices.
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Recently Read: Little House in the Big Woods
The first book in Wilder's series, taking place in 1871, is at the same time romanticized and realistic, and perfect for children and adults with an open mind. It tells of growing up in the Wisconsin wilderness with siblings and two loving parents, surrounded by dangerous predators. Life is harsh, sometimes brutal, and the ways in which the family uses everything around them, organic or not, to survive is educational and fascinating. The narrative is also filled with tales of the past and premonitions of the future (such as new technology which saves days worth of hard work). The illustrations by Garth Williams are lovely, as always, and were based on his visits to the locations described in the text.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
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