Laura Ingalls Wilder

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I do not agree with the white washing of history. We need to learn from our past to do better in the future. And I think the citations of her work used to make this change were absurd.

+1
I think this decision is an abomination. Laura Ingalls Wilder has done so much for young readers. Her books (all of them) were among the first chapter books I ever read, and were an absolute foundation of my childhood, as they were for so many others. It's unbelievable to me that they're stripping her name from this award.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People! All they did was change the name of the award. Nobody is banning the books. Yeesh!

No, they're not banning the books. But the very act of purging her name from the award is incredibly offensive. She wrote what she knew, during her lifetime - not ours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think your explanation is a severe exaggeration. All they did was remove her name from the award as a result of some racist language that was consistent with the language of the era when the books were written (1930s), but inappropriate today, especially since the books are nonfiction. In no way has she been "purged as an author". The ALA has made it very clear that they still encourage people to read and discuss the books as an important part of American history.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/25/us/laura-ingalls-wilder-book-award-trnd/index.html

This is the first step.

They have sullied her name as something to be ashamed of, hidden away. They have implied that she is a racist, including retroactively removing he name from all the Wilder Awards already given including the first award that was given to Laura Ingalls Wilder

This is clearly a purging of history.

Oh please! Let me know when the portions of the books in the library have been redacted with black Sharpie. What do you care about some literary award that you have never heard of before today?

You may have just heard of this award, but those of us who are literate and those of us who are parents who are interested in books, read to and with our children and who favor books as a worthwhile use of our children's minds are familiar with this and other literary awards.

Exactly. Sounds like it's the PP who has never heard of this award.

[Anonymous]

I was reading Little House in the Big Woods to my younger daughter last night (I read the entire series to her older sister many years ago) and I skipped over the paragraph in the store where the storekeeper praises Mary for her blond hair and ignores brown haired Laura.

Generally I think the books are good bedtime reading for kids that like them and if patents are careful to point out and discuss the issues being discussed here. But I’m sure there are better options for school reading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was reading Little House in the Big Woods to my younger daughter last night (I read the entire series to her older sister many years ago) and I skipped over the paragraph in the store where the storekeeper praises Mary for her blond hair and ignores brown haired Laura.

Generally I think the books are good bedtime reading for kids that like them and if patents are careful to point out and discuss the issues being discussed here. But I’m sure there are better options for school reading.

Why would you do that? You are taking things to a new round of silliness.

As a brunette (non white) child, Laura's brown hair was something that made me proud of my brown hair growing up in a sea of blondes or sun spray blondes.

Pa liked brown hair. The brown haired heroine was fiesty, smart, independent and strong.

Blonde haired Mary was vain, week and a goody two shoes. She didn't turn nice until she was struck blind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was reading Little House in the Big Woods to my younger daughter last night (I read the entire series to her older sister many years ago) and I skipped over the paragraph in the store where the storekeeper praises Mary for her blond hair and ignores brown haired Laura.

Generally I think the books are good bedtime reading for kids that like them and if patents are careful to point out and discuss the issues being discussed here. But I’m sure there are better options for school reading.

Why would you do that? You are taking things to a new round of silliness.

As a brunette (non white) child, Laura's brown hair was something that made me proud of my brown hair growing up in a sea of blondes or sun spray blondes.

Pa liked brown hair. The brown haired heroine was fiesty, smart, independent and strong.

Blonde haired Mary was vain, week and a goody two shoes. She didn't turn nice until she was struck blind.

I agree too. That passage made me proud of my brown hair. It was one I thought about a lot over my childhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was reading Little House in the Big Woods to my younger daughter last night (I read the entire series to her older sister many years ago) and I skipped over the paragraph in the store where the storekeeper praises Mary for her blond hair and ignores brown haired Laura.

Generally I think the books are good bedtime reading for kids that like them and if patents are careful to point out and discuss the issues being discussed here. But I’m sure there are better options for school reading.

Why would you do that? You are taking things to a new round of silliness.

As a brunette (non white) child, Laura's brown hair was something that made me proud of my brown hair growing up in a sea of blondes or sun spray blondes.

Pa liked brown hair. The brown haired heroine was fiesty, smart, independent and strong.

Blonde haired Mary was vain, week and a goody two shoes. She didn't turn nice until she was struck blind.

I agree too. That passage made me proud of my brown hair. It was one I thought about a lot over my childhood.

Yep.

Laura was the first brown haired heroine ever. All the girls wanted to be Laura because she was so strong and smart.

We brunettes might not have had any Barbie dolls, but we had Laura.

She made me proud to be a brunette.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I do not agree with the white washing of history. We need to learn from our past to do better in the future. And I think the citations of her work used to make this change were absurd.

What about the Confederate statues?

same thing? different?

I said that instead of destroying them, place them in a museum where people can learn from them.

The whitewashing of history is a political agenda, by the way.

[Anonymous]

People are so damn mad when other people decide to UN-WHITEWASH our American history and not salute, sanitize and praise the racism of our past AND Present.
Get
Over
It

People care about justice and equality, not your damn fantasies .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People are so damn mad when other people decide to UN-WHITEWASH our American history and not salute, sanitize and praise the racism of our past AND Present.
Get
Over
It

People care about justice and equality, not your damn fantasies .

You do not sound very well informed about history and the importance of learning the hows and whys of the past.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There have been a couple recent and we'll publicized biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder depicting her as an awful person as well as a politically active racist, and showing that almost nothing in the Little House series was true. I suspect that had some influence on the decision, even if they aren't saying it. "Author depicts lived experience in a way we now dislike" is different from "Manipulative, racist crank wrote fiction that is racist." The current view is the latter.

Sorry, writing to correct myself because the two biographies blurred in my head. Laura Wilder's daughter, Rose, was the politically active one. She's believed (by many not all) to have ghostwritten the books for Laura.

I think if it were a true story written by Laura I might feel differently about the racism in it, but the fact it is a fabrication heavily influenced by Rose really affects the context. The series' vision of westward expansion is so popular (I loved it too) and colors how we think about personal independence and can-do spirit, and then you read the family were constantly running from creditors and stealing from native peoples... Ick.

It's funny, because I do think that was at least Rose's goal with the books, but I don't think the books really achieve that. (The TV show was much more successful in making it seem like they had this wonderful, self-made life.) When I read the books as a kid, I mostly focused on the fact that they got to run around a lot in the grass and milk cows, which seemed cool to a suburban kid--I don't think I took any great life lessons from it, other than that it would be cool to know how to build your own house and make your own dolls. But reading them as an adult, I'm really struck by how shitty it all was, and how it appears that her father had a terrible case of ADHD (or maybe bipolar?). The part where he's gone for months looking for work but doesn't send any money and no one knows where he is or if he'll come back? Or the part about where they borrow money to put glass windows into their house, and then the locusts eat all the crops so they lost the entire house to the bank and have to move again? Yikes, yikes, yikes.

When I read the online biographies on LIW , I was surprised that she had almost no contact with her parents in the later years of their lives. I think when they died, she had not seen them in many years, maybe decades. I know people were poor and travel was tough, but that still struck me -- this was a family with some issues. I mostly feel bad for her, and happy that there were at least some nice moments in her childhood that she could look back on and appreciate, despite all the horrible things. As I'm writing this, maybe that's sort of a life lesson.

OMG, like why didn't she just text her parents or uber there?!?

I keep reading your post and wonder how does one get through the education system and remain this ignorant about history, including hardships and communication from the past.

Probably most immigrants in the 1800s and early 1900s never again saw their parents and the families they left behind. It is hard to comprehend that an adult today does not understand how expensive and difficult travel and even written communication was at that time.

It made me giggle a little to read this criticism of my original post. I’m actually an American a history major from a top SLAC and I still do a little bit of historical research on the side as a hobby. I know life sucked for most people in the 19th century—one of the things I like about historical research is that it reminds us of the challenges that ordinary people faced, which we tend to forget about when we focus on the history of the rich and powerful. And I’m well aware that many people immigrated or migrated and never saw family again. But adult Laura did not move that far from her family and it was in an era after the US rail system was fairly well developed. The fact is she did not travel to see them for many years and rarely wrote (even though mails were reliable and she and her mom were both very literate.). Of course we can’t know for sure, but I do think a reasonable conclusion is that she and her parents were not that emotionally close as she aged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People! All they did was change the name of the award. Nobody is banning the books. Yeesh!

No, they're not banning the books. But the very act of purging her name from the award is incredibly offensive. She wrote what she knew, during her lifetime - not ours.

Ah, so it's YOUR being offended everyone should care about. It's only when other people are offended by something that they're wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There have been a couple recent and we'll publicized biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder depicting her as an awful person as well as a politically active racist, and showing that almost nothing in the Little House series was true. I suspect that had some influence on the decision, even if they aren't saying it. "Author depicts lived experience in a way we now dislike" is different from "Manipulative, racist crank wrote fiction that is racist." The current view is the latter.

Sorry, writing to correct myself because the two biographies blurred in my head. Laura Wilder's daughter, Rose, was the politically active one. She's believed (by many not all) to have ghostwritten the books for Laura.

I think if it were a true story written by Laura I might feel differently about the racism in it, but the fact it is a fabrication heavily influenced by Rose really affects the context. The series' vision of westward expansion is so popular (I loved it too) and colors how we think about personal independence and can-do spirit, and then you read the family were constantly running from creditors and stealing from native peoples... Ick.

It's funny, because I do think that was at least Rose's goal with the books, but I don't think the books really achieve that. (The TV show was much more successful in making it seem like they had this wonderful, self-made life.) When I read the books as a kid, I mostly focused on the fact that they got to run around a lot in the grass and milk cows, which seemed cool to a suburban kid--I don't think I took any great life lessons from it, other than that it would be cool to know how to build your own house and make your own dolls. But reading them as an adult, I'm really struck by how shitty it all was, and how it appears that her father had a terrible case of ADHD (or maybe bipolar?). The part where he's gone for months looking for work but doesn't send any money and no one knows where he is or if he'll come back? Or the part about where they borrow money to put glass windows into their house, and then the locusts eat all the crops so they lost the entire house to the bank and have to move again? Yikes, yikes, yikes.

When I read the online biographies on LIW , I was surprised that she had almost no contact with her parents in the later years of their lives. I think when they died, she had not seen them in many years, maybe decades. I know people were poor and travel was tough, but that still struck me -- this was a family with some issues. I mostly feel bad for her, and happy that there were at least some nice moments in her childhood that she could look back on and appreciate, despite all the horrible things. As I'm writing this, maybe that's sort of a life lesson.

OMG, like why didn't she just text her parents or uber there?!?

I keep reading your post and wonder how does one get through the education system and remain this ignorant about history, including hardships and communication from the past.

Probably most immigrants in the 1800s and early 1900s never again saw their parents and the families they left behind. It is hard to comprehend that an adult today does not understand how expensive and difficult travel and even written communication was at that time.

It made me giggle a little to read this criticism of my original post. I’m actually an American a history major from a top SLAC and I still do a little bit of historical research on the side as a hobby. I know life sucked for most people in the 19th century—one of the things I like about historical research is that it reminds us of the challenges that ordinary people faced, which we tend to forget about when we focus on the history of the rich and powerful. And I’m well aware that many people immigrated or migrated and never saw family again. But adult Laura did not move that far from her family and it was in an era after the US rail system was fairly well developed. The fact is she did not travel to see them for many years and rarely wrote (even though mails were reliable and she and her mom were both very literate.). Of course we can’t know for sure, but I do think a reasonable conclusion is that she and her parents were not that emotionally close as she aged.

The entire critique sounds like a 20 year old who has never cracked a history book.,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was reading Little House in the Big Woods to my younger daughter last night (I read the entire series to her older sister many years ago) and I skipped over the paragraph in the store where the storekeeper praises Mary for her blond hair and ignores brown haired Laura.

Generally I think the books are good bedtime reading for kids that like them and if patents are careful to point out and discuss the issues being discussed here. But I’m sure there are better options for school reading.

Why would you do that? You are taking things to a new round of silliness.

As a brunette (non white) child, Laura's brown hair was something that made me proud of my brown hair growing up in a sea of blondes or sun spray blondes.

Pa liked brown hair. The brown haired heroine was fiesty, smart, independent and strong.

Blonde haired Mary was vain, week and a goody two shoes. She didn't turn nice until she was struck blind.

I agree too. That passage made me proud of my brown hair. It was one I thought about a lot over my childhood.

Yep.

Laura was the first brown haired heroine ever. All the girls wanted to be Laura because she was so strong and smart.

We brunettes might not have had any Barbie dolls, but we had Laura.

She made me proud to be a brunette.

I agree that looking at the series as a whole brown haired Laura is the strong smart one and blond Mary is not. But at that moment in the first book Laura sees and describes the strong cultural preference for blond girls. My younger daughter has brown hair and is envious of the blond hair of her older sister (I guess like Laura) and at that moment I was reading it I didn't feel like repeating that cultural preference, or discussing it. I just wanted her to fall asleep thinking about what it must have been like to live in a one room house and go to town and into a store for the first time at six-years-old rather than worrying that the world prefers blonds when she has dark brown hair. I wish she didn't envy blond hair and I wish she worried less in general but I just didn't want to take any of that on last night.

[Anonymous]

As a girl, I hated both the little house on the prairie books AND the TV show.

Don't really care about the naming of the award, wish they would name it after a foundation or a library or a really good children's librarian rather than an author.