Posted on by TracyC

The Log Cabin Quilt

The Log Cabin Quilt by Ellen Howard, illustrated by Ronald Himler, 1996.

Elvirey’s granny loves quilting, and she always saves scraps of cloth from old clothes in a flour sack for her quilts. After Elvirey’s mother dies, her father moves the family to Michigan, traveling by covered wagon. When Elvirey tries to pack some of her mother’s things to bring with them, her father insists that they leave them behind, saying that they don’t have room for them. However, Granny insists on bringing her sack of quilting scraps, saying that she will sit on them in the wagon.

When the family finally reaches their destination, it’s just a clearing in a wooded area. They camp near a spring, and Elvirey’s father and brother begin building a cabin for the family. Elvirey and her sister add the chinking to the log walls of the cabin, packing the gaps with a mixture of mud and grass to keep out the wind.

However, the cabin still doesn’t feel like home to Elvirey. They don’t have her mother’s books, and there aren’t any flowers growing nearby to decorate the house like her mother would.

Then, one cold day, Elvirey’s father goes out hunting. He says that he will back before dark, but he doesn’t return. The night is very cold, and Elvirey and her family suddenly realize that it’s more than unusually cold in the cabin. The chinking they put in the walls of the cabin has frozen and fallen out, and the cold is getting in. Worse still, it’s starting to snow.

They’re worried about what happened to their father, and they’re worried about what they will do with the cold getting into the cabin. Then, suddenly, Elvirey has an inspiration. There is something they can use to fill the cracks in the cabin walls: Granny’s quilting scraps. With scraps from everyone’s clothes suddenly decorating the walls of the cabin, the cabin begins to look like it has turned into a quilt itself. When Elvirey’s father returns, he tells her that her mother would be proud of her, and for the first time, the cabin starts to feel like home to Elvirey.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

There’s a pun in this story that people who don’t know the names of quilting patterns might miss. There are many patterns that the squares of a quilt can have, and Log Cabin is a traditional quilting pattern. When Elvirey and her siblings stuff the quilting scraps into the walls of their cabin, their Granny laughs about them creating a “log cabin quilt”, and it’s not just that she’s amused that they’ve made their cabin walls look like a quilt with all the scraps; it’s a pun on the name of the quilting pattern.

Although the story is about a family of pioneers, the focus of the story isn’t really their journey by covered wagon or the building of their cabin. It’s about loss and change and about what makes a new place feel like home. At first, Elvirey doesn’t feel like their cabin is their home because they no longer have the familiar things that belonged to her mother, and she can’t do some of the things that her mother used to do, like decorating the home with flowers. Even the quilt scraps and their associated memories don’t quite make her feel like home, although they do add a needed touch of color and hominess to the cabin. What finally makes Elvirey feel like home is when her father mentions her mother. Since her mother died, her father hasn’t smiled and hasn’t talked about her mother at all. When he sees what they did with the quilt scraps, he does both, and that makes Elvirey finally feel like they’re home. She really needed that sense of her mother’s presence or her memory to really get a feeling of home.

Elvirey is an unusual name, but I think it’s a nickname or variation of Elvira. Elvira is an unusual name in modern times, and in the United States in modern times, it usually reminds people of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, a character portrayed by Cassandra Peterson and known for hosting horror movies since the 1980s. That reference has no relation to the story. Elvira/Elvirey is just an interesting and unusual name.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mysterious Horseman

The Mysterious Horseman: An Adventure in Prairietown, 1836, by Kate Waters, 1994.

This book is part of a loose series of books by Kate Waters, showing child reenactors at living history museums, having adventures in the roles of the characters they play. While most of the books are set in Colonial times at Plymouth and Colonial Williamsburg, the setting for this story is the Connor Prairie living history museum in Indiana, which shows life in a small town in the 19th century.

The story centers around a boy named Andrew McClure. He is the only one of his siblings left still living with their parents. His older sister is now married, and his baby brother died of an illness during the last year. His family is still grieving for his little brother. Andrew’s best friend is a boy named Thomas Curtis, who lives nearby, and Andrew works part time at a local inn to earn some money.

One day, while Andrew is doing some sweeping at the inn, he overhears some men talking in the taproom. He doesn’t hear their entire conversation, but he hears them talking about a mysterious rider without a head who chased a schoolmaster. Andrew is startled, and he wonders if that has something to do with the new schoolmaster who is supposed to arrive in town.

When Andrew is done with his work, he goes to the schoolhouse, and he finds his friend Thomas and Thomas’s sister, helping the new schoolmaster to clean the schoolhouse and prepare it for lessons to start. Andrew wants to talk to Thomas about what he overheard at the inn, but the schoolmaster only wants to talk to the boys about lessons.

Later, Andrew does have a chance to talk to Thomas, and both of the boys are spooked by the idea of a headless rider. They even think that they hear the rider on the road! The frightened boys go see Thomas’s father, the blacksmith, and tell him about the rider. Fortunately, the blacksmith knows what the men were talking about, and he can settle the boys’ fears.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I didn’t know about this book until I was looking up Kate Waters’s books for my younger cousins. I was surprised because Kate Waters’s living history museum books are mostly set on the East Coast or focus on the Colonial era. This 19th century book set in Indiana somewhat departs from the theme and has a different feel from the other Kate Waters books, but I enjoyed it. I’ve been to Connor Prairie because I have relatives in the area, and I enjoyed my visit. It’s been years since I’ve been there, so I didn’t immediately recognize the setting. When I read the explanation in the back of the book, I was fascinated to realize that I had visited that location before.

Andrew has a fascination for life on the frontier because he often watches people pass through his town on their way further west, and he daydreams about going west himself. His family is also still coming to terms with the death of his little brother, so the subject of death is still on Andrew’s mind. The deaths of children due to illness were sadly common in the 19th century and on the frontier, and the mourning in Andrew’s family adds to the melancholy and spooky atmosphere of the story.

Most adults and older children will probably recognize what the men at the inn where actually talking about when they were discussing the headless rider who chased the schoolmaster. When the boys talk to Thomas’s father, he immediately recognizes the story as the plot of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, originally published in 1820, about 16 years before the story in this book is suppose to take place. The men at the inn were just discussing the plot of the story, not something that they saw on the road themselves.

Posted on by TracyC

Changes for Kirsten

Kirsten, An American Girl

Changes for Kirsten by Janet Beeler Shaw, 1988.

It’s winter, and Kirsten’s brother, Lars, is going to set animal traps in the woods with his friend, John Stewart, who lives nearby. Kirsten is friends with John’s sister, Mary. Trapping animals for their pelts is one of the ways that the boys make some extra money. The local men are all away, working at a logging camp for the winter. Kirsten isn’t really interested in trapping animals so much as she just wants to get out of her family’s little cabin because she’s been cooped up due to the winter weather, so she persuades the boys to let her come along on their trapping expedition.

As they go through the woods, Kirsten spots an animal snare that someone else set out, and John explains that there’s an old trapper called Old Jack who lives by himself in the woods. He has no family and often prefers to be by himself and avoids meeting many people, although he sometimes helps locals with their own traps. The snare is probably one of his traps. When they find a trap that has a baby raccoon caught by the tail, the boys say that it’s too small for them to kill it for its pelt, and Kirsten feels sorry for it. She persuades them to let her take it home and nurse it back to health, like she did with an injured bird, before releasing it into the wild again.

Kirsten is supposed to leave the little raccoon in the barn because, as her family tries to explain to her, wild animals are wild and uncontrollable. However, Kirsten feels sorry for the little thing because the barn is cold, so she brings it into the cabin. It turns out to be a terrible idea. The raccoon gets loose and knocks over an oil lamp that sets the cabin on fire! Kirsten makes her her little brother and sister get out safely, and when she realizes that the fire is spreading too fast for her to stop it, she manages to save the painted trunk with some of her family’s most important belongings. Unfortunately, the cabin is completely destroyed.

Kirsten’s aunt takes in Kirsten, her mother, and her siblings. It’s a little crowded in her house, but at least, they have a place to go. Everyone is understandably upset, although they are not too hard on Kirsten for causing the disaster. However, her mother says that they had been hoping that maybe they could buy a little land with the money Kirsten’s father is making at the logging camp, but she doesn’t see how they can now. They’re going to have to build a new cabin and replace some of essentials that they lost in the fire.

Then, John and Mary Stewart tell the Larsons that their family will be moving to Oregon because their father has found a new job managing a logging camp there. Kirsten is sorry to see the Stewarts leave because they’ve been good friends, but Aunt Inger points out that the Larsons’ problems will be solved if they can manage to buy the Stewarts’ house. The Stewarts’ house is much bigger than the little cabin where the Larsons lived, and the Stewarts will have to sell their home before they can move anyway. The problem is that the Larsons just don’t have the money to afford the Stewarts’ house.

All Lars can think to do is try to make more money through trapping. Kirsten goes along to help him, and one evening, they stay out much later than they mean to and get lost in the dark woods. When the spot some human tracks in the snow, they think that they are probably the tracks of Old Jack, the trapper hermit. Kirsten thinks that Old Jack sounds frightening, but with no one else to turn to for help and shelter, they decide to follow the tracks to where Old Jack lives. When they find Old Jack’s home in a cave that he has turned into a rough house, they make an important discovery that changes everything for the Larsons.

The book ends with a section of historical information that explains how new settlers moving westward turned frontier areas like the area where Kirsten’s family lived into more settled towns. The farms where people lived became less isolated, and railroads connected cities and rural areas across the country. The first transcontinental railroad in the United States was completed by the time Kirsten would have turned 24 years old, changing the ways that people and goods traveled.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

This was one of the books that I remember I didn’t like in the Kirsten series when I was a kid because it’s just so painful when the family’s cabin burns. Reading the book again, I appreciated how the family wasn’t overly hard on Kirsten about bringing the raccoon into the cabin that caused the fire. I couldn’t really blame the others if they were upset with Kirsten because it’s a major disaster that destroys their home and leaves them in a very precarious position. However, even though they’re understandably upset at the situation, it is nice that they don’t lay a guilt trip on Kirsten about it because that would have made it a much sadder story.

It also helps that the situation works out for the best in the end. When they hear that the Stewarts are moving, they do want the Stewarts’ house, but they just don’t think they will be able to afford it. What changes for the Larsons is that they receive an unusual sort of inheritance from Old Jack. When Kirsten and Lars are lost in the woods and seek shelter from Old Jack, they discover that Old Jack has died. There doesn’t appear to be any foul play. Old Jack was an elderly man, and he seems to have died from natural causes in his house. It’s a grim discovery, but while Kirsten and Lars shelter in his house with the body overnight, they also realize that Old Jack has a hoard of fine animal pelts. Since Old Jack has no family and no one to inherit his property, there is no dispute that the Larsons can claim his pelts because they found his body and plan to arrange for his burial. With the money that Old Jack’s pelts bring, they are able to afford the Stewarts’ house, which is much better than their old cabin. The Stewarts also leave them some furniture and household supplies.

I do like it that the story worked out for the best, although I wasn’t fond of the theme of trapping animals for pelts. I remember that this was an aspect of other books that I read as a kid, like Where the Red Fern Grows, but I never liked hearing or reading about it. I understand hunting for food, and I know the family in the story traps animals for fur because they badly need money, but it’s not a subject that I enjoy hearing about. The metal traps the boys use for trapping animals are considered inhumane in modern times, and their use is now banned or restricted in many countries and states.

Posted on by TracyC

Kirsten’s Surprise

Kirsten, An American Girl

Kirsten’s Surprise by Janet Shaw, 1986.

It’s winter, and Kirsten’s family is just starting to prepare for Christmas. Kirsten’s mother has her help make their Christmas bread. So many things have changed for their family since they came to America and moved to the frontier in Minnesota, Kirsten asks her mother if they will be celebrating Christmas just like they used to when they lived in Sweden. The family doesn’t have much money and can’t afford extra treats, but her mother says they will do the best they can.

When they arrived last summer, the family didn’t even have enough money to pay for a wagon to carry their belongings to their new house, so they had to leave them in storage in Riverton, including Kirsten’s doll, Sari. Since then, Kirsten has been using a stuffed sock as a doll. Kirsten’s mother tells her that her father has arranged for their trunks to be sent to Maryville, which is closer, but still 10 miles away. Kirsten is eager to retrieve them, but her mother says that will have to wait because there are too many other things they need to do now to get ready for winter. Kirsten worries that they won’t be able to get their trunks before the snows come. If the roads are blocked by snow, they won’t have their trunks until spring! The more Kirsten thinks about the trunks, the more she wishes that they had the things in them, the things that would remind her of her home in Sweden and make their cabin feel more like home.

One day, while she is playing with her cousins, Lisbeth and Anna, Kirsten mentions St. Lucia, and she is surprised when her cousins don’t know what she is talking about. In Sweden, families traditionally celebrate St. Lucia’s Day before Christmas. However, Lisbeth and Anna were too young when they left Sweden, years before Kirsten left with her family, so they don’t remember that tradition, and since they came to America, they only remember celebrating Christmas in December. They ask Kirsten what happens on St. Lucia’s Day. Kirsten explains that it’s the shortest and darkest day of the year. One girl in the family dresses up as the Lucia queen, wearing a white dress and a wreath of candles on her head, and she wakes her family, bringing them a special breakfast with coffee and Lucia buns. Anna is enchanted by this description, and the girl talk about surprising their families with their own St. Lucia’s Day celebration.

Then, Kirsten remembers that the long, white nightgown she used for her St. Lucia’s Day dress last year is in one of her family’s trunks, and St. Lucia’s Day (December 13th) is only five days away. The other girls are about to give up on the idea of celebrating St. Lucia’s Day, but Kirsten thinks maybe they should ask Miss Winston if she knows what to do. Miss Winston is their schoolteacher, and she’s still living with Lisbeth and Anna’s families. Miss Winston has mentioned that she misses the Christmas parties her family and friends had back East, so the girls think that she might enjoy helping them plan a special surprise.

Miss Winston is happy to give the girls some candles and help them make St. Lucia crowns, but Kirsten’s father is still too busy to get the family’s trunks. He gets so annoyed with Kirsten asking about them that he tells her not to ask about them again. Lisbeth says that, if their plan won’t work out for this year, they can do it next year, but Kirsten feels badly for getting their hopes up. Her own hopes are also set on having a St. Lucia Day, but she doesn’t know what to do without the dress in the trunk.

Then, one day, she finally hears her father say that he will have time to go for the trunks, and he thinks he had better do it soon because there will be more snow coming. Kirsten is excited and asks if she can go along with him to get them. At first, he doesn’t want to take Kirsten because there won’t be much room in the sleigh for her, and he thinks it would be better for her to go to school with the other children, but she persuades him to let her come.

The journey to Maryville is fun, riding through the snow and singing a Christmas carol. Kirsten even gets a piece of candy at the general store. When they retrieve the trunks, Kirsten wants to open them right away, but her father says they need to leave because it’s already snowing harder, and they need to get home.

The weather gets worse on their way home, and Kirsten wonders if they should turn back, but her father thinks they can make it home. As it gets worse yet, Kirsten’s father gets out of the sleigh to lead the horse through the snow, and he accidentally twists his knee. With her father injured, Kirsten gets out the sleigh to lead the horse. The situation is dangerous, but fortunately, Kirsten realizes where they are, and she knows that there is a cave nearby where they can take shelter.

When Kirsten and her father arrive home, they are greeted by their worried family, and it’s St. Lucia Day. With some help from Miss Winston and her cousins, Kirsten is able to give her whole family their St. Lucia Day surprise, but it has even greater meaning because of everything they’ve been through.

There is a section of historical information in the back of the book about how Christmas was celebrated on the American frontier in the mid-19th century and how it was different from the Christmases families like Kirsten would have experienced in Sweden.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

This was my favorite of the Kirsten books! Although there is some danger to Kirsten and her father when they get caught in the snowstorm after retrieving the trunks, everything turns out fine, and Kirsten saves her father because she insisted on going with him on the trip. This book is also fun because it introduces readers to the concept of St. Lucia’s Day. I think the first book I read as a kid that explained about St. Lucia’s Day was the nonfiction book Christmas Around the World, but I liked seeing this frontier family celebrate their St. Lucia tradition.

thought that Kirsten’s parents impatience with her “pestering” them about retrieving the family’s belongings was realistic, just like parents in real life might act when a child repeatedly asks for something they can’t give them right away. However, at the same time, Kirsten’s mother seems to understand that Kirsten is asking for the trunks for deeper emotional reasons. Not only does Kirsten badly miss her doll, which has been stored in one of the family’s trunks since the beginning of the series, but the other things in the trunk are both useful for the winter season and have connections to the people the family left behind in Sweden. With Christmas coming, Kirsten and other members in the family are missing those connections and the feeling of home. Kirsten’s mother points out that people are more important than belongings, but she also agrees with Kirsten that some belongings represent ties to other people.

Kirsten also misses the tradition of St. Lucia’s Day because that tradition usually marks the beginning of the Christmas season for the family. When Kirsten surprises her family by dressing in her St. Lucia costume, it’s a happy surprise for everyone and really makes everyone feel like Christmas. However, Kirsten also feels the significance of the holiday more than she ever did before because, having been welcomed home by the lights of their house and her waiting and worried family, she better appreciates the tradition of St. Lucia welcoming others with light and food.

As with other historical American Girls books, I also enjoyed the detailed colored pencil drawings of the characters and scenes!

Posted on by TracyC

Homespun Sarah

Homespun Sarah by Verla Kay, illustrated by Ted Rand, 2003.

This picture book tells a story in rhyme about a girl living in 18th century Pennsylvania and what she and her family do to make her a new dress when she begins outgrowing her old one.

As Sarah gets dressed one morning, her old dress is noticeably tight, and it’s beginning to get too short for her. Because her family lives on a farm, they must produce most of what they need themselves, and that includes clothing. For Sarah to have a new dress, they must make one themselves entirely from scratch, which is what “homespun” means – they make the dress from homemade cloth from yarn that they have spun themselves.

Various family members carry out different household chores, and as the story continues, readers see how everything they do is not only a part of the family’s daily life but also contributes to the creation of the new dress. The family raises sheep, so they must start by sheering the sheep to get the wool for the dress.

In between doing routine chores, like doing the laundry and making new candles, they card and comb the wool and spin it into yarn with their spinning wheel. The family also owns a large loom, which is how they weave the wool yarn and flax into cloth called linsey-woolsey. The cloth they make is blue and red, dyed using plants that they have produced and gathered.

Once they’ve made the homespun cloth, Sarah’s mother measures her to plan the size of the dress and sews the dress. Sarah gets a new red dress, while her younger sister gets a blue one. Sarah is excited about her new dress, which fits her much better than the old one, and spins around to show it off!

The author’s note at the beginning of the book says that the story is set in Pennsylvania during the 1700s, and she wanted to show how people lived during that time, having to produce everything or almost everything they used by themselves. It also shows various aspects of family life, from where and how they slept to what they ate. The characters in the book, even the children, are shown drinking beer, but the author explains that is because water wasn’t considered entirely safe to drink. The beer they drank back then was very weak and “barely alcoholic”, which was why the children could have it. (We have water treatment facilities and devices available in the United States in modern times to ensure the quality of the water, so this isn’t something that we typically do now, especially with children, and I have more to say about this in my reaction.)

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

When I was a kid, I often skipped over prefaces and author’s notes because I just wanted to get to the story, but the author’s note really adds some historical depth and helps to clarify some aspects of the story that children might misunderstand. For example, I thought that the clarification about the mention of the characters drinking beer was important. Alcohol, chemically speaking, is actually a mild poison. It’s mild enough that humans can have it in small amounts without dying or even becoming ill (although we can get sick or die from large amounts, and some people have a greater or weaker natural tolerance to it, compared to each other), but even weak alcohol might kill germs in water and make it safer for humans to drink. This is the way it’s being used in this book. Because this book is for children, it’s helpful to explain this so that child readers understand that what the characters have isn’t quite the same as modern beer and that it’s not okay for children to drink modern beer in the same way. I think this is good book for parents or other adults to read with kids, so the adults can point this out to kids and help them to understand other historical elements of the story that they might miss or misunderstand.

The author’s note also explains that, because people during the time the story is set, had to make their own clothes by hand, and making was a very time-consuming, labor-intensive process, people had far fewer clothes back then than they do now. It was common for someone to have only one set of clothes that they wore every day until they were no long usable. Getting a new set of clothes was an exciting occasion, and that’s what the story in the book tries to capture. When readers see what this family goes through to create just one new dress for a girl who is outgrowing her last one, they can understand how much that dress means to the girl who receives it.

I love books that show how things are made, so I appreciated this book for the process it shows. However, because the story is told in short, simple rhymes and focuses on the how the process would look to a casual observer without getting too detailed, I felt like there were many parts of the process that were implied rather than stated. For example, they don’t explicitly mention that the red and blue dyes for the cloth came from the red berries the girls gathered or the blue flowers of the flax plant, but it’s implied by the earlier mentions of these plants and the way the book showed the characters gathering them. That could be enough for a casual reader, but I’m the kind of person who likes hearing the details of the process, so I would have liked more detailed explanations.

I did appreciate the way the book showed aspects of daily life in the 18th century. Some of them are explained in the author’s note, but there are also other parts of daily life to notice in the pictures. One of my favorite ones was the way that the youngest child in the family is tied to her mother or older sister’s apron strings to keep her from wandering away and getting into trouble while they’re doing their chores.

Posted on by TracyC

Kirsten Saves the Day

Kirsten, An American Girl

Kirsten Saves the Day by Janet Beeler Shaw, 1988.

It’s summer, and for a frontier family, the summer chores can be the most fun! Kirsten and her younger brother, Peter, are going fishing. They’re hoping to get enough fish for their family and their Uncle Olav’s family to have for supper. There is plenty of trout in the stream, and they should be able to get enough fish, although sometimes, disasters happen on their fishing trips. Once, Peter chased a skunk, and their mother also warns them to be careful of snakes and bears. Kirsten wears a whistle around her neck that she can blow if they get into trouble. Kirsten thinks her mother worries too much.

The children take their dog, Caro, fishing with them. Kirsten is a little concerned because Caro likes to chase things, but Peter insists that he can watch the dog and fish at the same time. When they don’t seem to have much luck getting big enough fish in the stream, they decide to go upstream to the pool. The fishing goes well, but Caro is stung by a bee.

Kirsten realizes that Caro must have found a “bee tree”, a tree where bees have built their hive. Kirsten is interested in finding the tree because it’s a source of honey and honeycomb that their mother can make into special treats. If they can collect enough honey, their father might even be able to sell some and buy some of the things the family needs. They need to be careful while looking for the tree, though, or they might get stung themselves. Kirsten is pleased when she finds the tree, but she notices that there are marks on it from a bear’s claws, so it looks like a bear was trying to get the honey, too. Kirsten could ask her father how to get the honey and get him to help, but she wants to figure out how to do it herself and surprise everyone. She asks Peter to keep the bee tree a secret while she tries to figure out how to get the honey, and Peter reluctantly agrees.

Meanwhile, Kirsten’s cousins tell her about the town’s Fourth of July celebration. Kirsten’s family hasn’t lived in America for very long, so her cousins have to explain the significance of the holiday to her. Every year, the nearby town holds a parade and picnic with music and games. A lot of the local farmers also bring things to sell, like pies, butter, or preserves, and they use the money they make to buy things they need. Kirsten thinks again about the honey tree and the things her family could buy. She really wants a straw hat, like her cousins wear.

Later, when Kirsten is picking berries with her cousins, she sees a little black bear cub. She thinks it’s adorable, but Lisbeth says they have to leave the area immediately. If the baby is near the berries, its mother is sure to be somewhere nearby, and mother bears get dangerous if they think someone might hurt their cubs. Kirsten doesn’t really take the warning seriously until she tries to take Peter and Caro back to the bee tree with her to get the honey, and they meet the mother bear face-to-face!

The book ends with a section of historical information about the wilderness on the American frontier in the 1800s. Wild plants and animals were sources of food, but they were also sources of danger, like the bears in the story. The attempts of the pioneers to control the land were about securing sources of food and reducing sources of danger. There is information in the book about how pioneers cooked and how they dealt with changing seasons and weather. It also discusses the Fourth of July and how trips to town were rare treats for pioneer farming families.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

It’s a good story about the difference between bravery and being foolhardy. From the beginning, even young Peter reminds Kirsten that being brave and being foolish are not the same thing. After their hair-raising encounter with the bear, in which the children have a narrow escape and their dog is injured (but fortunately not killed), the children’s father lectures Kirsten about putting both her life and her little brother’s life in danger. When Kirsten explains what she was trying to do with the bee tree, her father also tells her that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. She took his equipment, but if she had carried out her plan the way she was thinking of doing it, she would have both destroyed the hive and ruined the honey as well as getting badly stung. Kirsten should have just gone to her father as soon as she found the tree and got his help from the beginning. Kirsten is ashamed for getting their dog hurt and putting herself and her brother in danger and almost ruining her special find, and she apologizes.

Because Kirsten’s father now understands the situation, he gets Kirsten’s older brother, Lars, to help him move the colony of bees to their farm. He knows how to set up hives and keep bees long term, so instead of this being just a one-time find and honey harvest, they will be able to get honey from the bees regularly. Kirsten goes with her father and Lars to watch them move the bees. She does it because she’s been having bad dreams about the traumatic escape from the bear, and she thinks it will help her to recover if she goes to the area again and sees it with her father and brother, when it’s safe.

Kirsten still feels bad that she wasn’t able to get the honey all by herself and that her attempt to do it was a disaster, but her mother consoles her. She says that she and Kirsten’s father understand that Kirsten was just trying to help and that her discovery has helped them. She just needs to learn to be careful as well as being brave. I thought that it was also a lesson in learning to share the glory instead of trying to take all the credit by going it alone and risking the success of the project, but the book didn’t quite say that. Kirsten wanted to be the one to say that she did it all herself, but because she couldn’t really do it all herself, everything went wrong. She could have accomplished her goals by talking to her father in the beginning and still been the heroine who found the bee tree, as her mother pointed out. She still gets credit for what she did without needing to take credit for what she couldn’t do alone.

The book ends with the family enjoying the Fourth of July celebration. Thanks to the discovery of the bees, they are able to buy the things they need.

Posted on by TracyC

Happy Birthday, Kirsten

Kirsten, An American Girl

Happy Birthday, Kirsten by Janet Beeler Shaw, 1987.

It’s spring, and Kirsten’s family is planning to build a new barn on the farm that they share with Uncle Olav and his family, and her mother is expecting a new baby.

One day, while they are outside, working, dark clouds come, the wind picks up, and Aunt Inger thinks it might be a tornado. She urges everyone to get into the root cellar for safety. Miss Winston, the school teacher who is staying with Uncle Olav and Aunt Inger, joins them in the cellar. She brings her quilt with her for comfort and because it reminds her of home, so she wouldn’t want to lose it to a tornado.

She tells Kirsten and her cousins that her mother and other women and girls in her family made the quilt for her as a present when she left Maine. The scraps of cloth in the quilt came from clothes members of her family used to wear and things she used to wear when she was younger. Everyone who worked on the quilt signed it, making it a “friendship quilt.” Kirsten and her cousins ask Miss Winston if she could teach them to make a quilt like this one, and she agrees. She says that she will give them some muslin for the backing, but they’ll have to supply the scraps of cloth for the designs themselves. Because it takes a lot of work to make a big quilt, she suggests that they each make a square. Quilts are an unusual concept to the Swedish family because people in Sweden during their time usually use woven blankets. Kirsten’s mother also reminds her that she will need her help to sew more clothes for the new baby. Kirsten’s cousins, Anna and Lisbeth, suggest that they do their quilt sewing during recess at school, and Miss Winston agrees.

At school, the girls trade cloth scraps with each other and invite other girls to join them in quilting. One of the other girls, Mary Stewart, has done quilting before, so she helps the others. While the girls sew, they talk, and Kirsten talks about the baby that her mother is expecting. Mary says that the little girl her family calls her little sister is actually her cousin. She was born as one of a set of twins to Mary’s aunt, but the other twin died at birth, and their mother died shortly after, so Mary’s mother took the baby to raise with her family. Stories like that worry Kirsten because she worries that something might happen to her mother or the new baby.

Mary also brings up the topic of whether or not Miss Winston will move on. She’s been going to Powderkeg School for four years, and every year, the previous teacher moves on, and they get a new one. Although Kirsten initially had trouble with Miss Winston, she has become fond of her, and she wouldn’t like to see her go. With all the other changes happening in Kirsten’s life, she doesn’t want any other major changes now. Kirsten suggests to the other girls that they turn their quilting project into another friendship quilt for Miss Winston, signing it like her family members signed their quilt. The other girls debate about whether they could manage to finish a quilt like that by the end of the summer term. Lisbeth thinks they could, but Mary doesn’t want to rush the project because the best part of making a quilt is sewing it with your friends.

The talk then turns to Kirsten’s birthday. She will be turning ten years old soon. She didn’t celebrate her last birthday because that was during their voyage to America. Mary says that ten is a more important birthday anyway, although Kirsten isn’t sure if her family will do anything for her birthday this year, either. Everyone’s attention is taken up with preparations for the new baby.

When Kirsten’s mother tells her that the new baby is about to be born, she also tells her that she remembers the day Kirsten was born, too. She says that she will never forget that day because she had been hoping for a daughter, and she knows that Kirsten’s birthday is coming in two more weeks. Kirsten is happy that her mother remembers, and she hurries to get her aunt to help with the birth of the baby.

Fortunately, Kirsten’s new sister is born safely, although Kirsten has to take some time away from school to help her mother with the new baby and household chores. However, her mother tells her that her friends from school will be coming to the raising of the new barn, which is the day before Kirsten’s birthday, and she will allow Kirsten to have her birthday free to have fun with her friends.

At the barn raising, Kirsten and her friends have a chance to work on their quilt again. Kirsten is behind on making her quilt square, but her friends have arranged a special surprise for Kirsten’s birthday.

There is a section in the back of the book about babies and young children on the frontier during the mid-1800s. Children were born at home then, with the help of family members and midwives because there were few doctors and hospitals on the frontier. With limited access to medicine and without some of the modern medicines we have today, childbirth and early childhood were often risky. It was sadly common for families to lose a child or two before they were five years old. Because accidents as well as illness posed a threat to young children, parents were often strict with discipline so their children would listen to them and follow their instructions to avoid disaster.

This part of the book also talks about the phases of a child’s life on the frontier. Older children wore clothes that looked like smaller versions of their parents clothes, and they would often do the same kinds of chores that their parents did on their farms. Most children expected to become farmers or farm wives, like their parents. They were raised doing farm work, and they didn’t expect to do anything else when they were older.

Although their lives were filled with chores, there were still some opportunities for fun. Sometimes, neighbors would turn chores into social occasions, called “bees.” These work parties could center around any kind of chore that the community needed to do and could do together, like raising a barn or making quilts, like the characters in the story. Along with accomplishing their task, it was a chance for friends and neighbors to get together and talk and have a little fun.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I don’t think I read this particular book in the Kirsten series when I was young. I wasn’t as fond of the Kirsten books as I was other series in the American Girls franchise because there are some really sad parts in the series. However, I really enjoyed this particular book. Kirsten is worried at first about the welfare of her mother and her family’s new baby because she knows that life on the frontier can be dangerous, and sometimes mothers die in childbirth, and babies don’t always survive. Fortunately, everything turns out well for Kirsten’s mother and new little sister.

This is a happy spring story with a focus on new life and friendship. Even the smallest kitten in the new litter seems like it’s going to be fine. I liked it because, while life on the frontier could be very hard, it’s nice to see that not everything turned out as a tragedy. The book ends with the barn raising and birthday celebration for Kirsten.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Kirsten Learns a Lesson

Kirsten, An American Girl

Kirsten Learns a Lesson by Janet Beeler Shaw, 1986.

It’s November, 1854, and now that nine-year-old Kirsten’s family has settled in their new home in Minnesota and the harvest season is over, it’s time for the children to go to school. Kirsten and her brothers, Lars and Peter, will go to the small local school with their cousins, Lisbeth and Anna. Powderkeg School is a one-room schoolhouse in a little log cabin. Lisbeth and Anna’s stories about what Powderkeg School is like worry Kirsten. They talk about how strict their teacher, Mr. Coogan, is. Sometimes, the boys in class get rowdy and fight, and Mr. Coogan uses physical punishment on them. However, the girls tell Kirsten that she probably won’t have any problems with Mr. Coogan because he likes children who are well-behaved, and Kirsten is well-behaved. Still, Kirsten is nervous about what her new school will be like.

When they get to school, they learn that Mr. Coogan was injured in a fall from his horse, so they will have a replacement teacher, Miss Winston, who has only recently arrived from Maine. When one of the mean boys in class says he hops the horse also stepped on Mr. Coogan, Miss Winston tells him that nobody talks out of turn in her class and, although they live in the country, “we are not savages like the Indians.” (This is a 19th century attitude toward Native Americans, but this concept is challenged later in the story.)

Miss Winston has each of the children in class introduce themselves so she can get to know everyone. When it’s Kirsten’s turn to say her name, she forgets to address her teacher as ma’am, like the other students. Miss Winston insists that she say “ma’am”, and when she sees Kirsten struggling with the language, she asks Kirsten if she speaks English. Kirsten says that she speaks a little, and her cousins explain that her family just came from Sweden and that they speak Swedish at home. Miss Winston says that “practice makes perfect”, so Kirsten will practice her English in school. For now, she will have the easiest lessons and share seven-year-old Anna’s schoolbook.

When the mean boy, Amos, laughs at Kirsten, Miss Winston glares at him and strikes the school’s iron stove with her ruler, startling the students. Miss Winston says that her father was a ship’s captain, so she knows how to be in charge of her students, like he was in charge of his crew. Then, she deconstructs the sentence “Miss Winston hit the stove”, pointing out which words are the subject, verb, and direct object of the sentence. Then she warns the class to “Be careful that the direct object of hit isn’t the student.” The implication is that Miss Winston is just as willing to use physical punishment against her students as Mr. Coogan was.

When Amos introduces himself to Miss Winston, we learn that he is nineteen years old, the same age as the new teacher, but the new teacher says that, in spite of being the same age, she’s still the teacher, and he’s the student. In spite of being more a young man than a boy in age, Amos has only just finished the third reader, and Miss Winston says her role is to help him read and do math like a man would, embarrassing Amos. (He can’t use his age to put himself on an equal footing with the new teacher because they are not intellectual equals. She’s the same age, but she has graduated from her own school and become a teacher, and he’s still struggling along with low level math and reading.)

Anna helps Kirsten with her lessons, and Miss Winston praises her for helping to teach Kirsten, but she doesn’t praise Kirsten for doing a good job. At the end of the school day, Kirsten and her cousins talk about the new teacher. Anna thinks that Miss Winston seems nice, but Kirsten thinks that Miss Winston doesn’t like her and that she seems very strict. She asks if that was what Mr. Coogan was like, and Lisbeth says he was worse. The best part of the day for Kirsten was lunchtime, when the children were allowed some play time. When she ran around and played tag with the other children, it didn’t matter if she didn’t speak much English.

When the girls play school with their dolls, Anna imitates Miss Winston and her comment about “savages.” Kirsten asks the other girls what that word means. They say it means “wild.” Kirsten asks them if the Indians (Native Americans) are really like that, and they say that some people say they’re kind and will help people if they need food but others day that they’re “cruel and bloodthirsty.” They’ve seen an Indian man before. He came to their house when their mother was roasting meat, and he left when their mother gave him some. They thought he looked pretty “savage” because his face was painted, and he had eagle feathers in his hair. The girls say that Native Americans also wear knives and live in tents. As a farmer, their father is concerned about the Native Americans. He knows that, if the farmers take too much of their usual hunting grounds for farming, it will drive away the animals, and the Native Americans will be starving and angry. While he is happy that he has been able to secure some farmland for his family (I explained a little about the famine conditions and lack of farmland in Sweden around this time that caused people like the Larsons to leave their country when I covered Meet Kirsten), he is aware that the Native Americans also need land for their survival.

At school, Miss Winston announces that each student will memorize a poem and recite it for the class. When they recite their poems, she wants them to say them with feeling and show the emotions their poem is trying to convey. Kirsten worries about this assignment because she’s still learning English. It’s hard enough for her to learn to read anything in English and understand the meaning of the words. She doesn’t know how she can also learn to memorize an entire poem and say it in front of everyone. Miss Winston gives Kirsten a short poem to learn, but having even a short one doesn’t seem to help Kirsten.

Meanwhile, Kirsten has her first encounter with a Native American when she spots an Indian (Native American) girl watching her while she’s getting water from the stream. The girl runs away, but Kirsten finds a blue bead that she dropped. Kirsten takes it and leaves her a little pretend cake that she and her cousins made for their dolls. Later, she finds that the cake is missing and that there’s a green duck feather in its place. She and the Indian girl trade little objects in this way, gradually becoming friends.

Kirsten’s secret friendship with the Native American girl becomes a comfort to her when school is stressful. Frontier teachers often board with families who live near the school, and when Miss Winston comes to stay at Kirsten’s aunt and uncle’s house, Kirsten feels like school is following her home. What’s worse is that Kirsten’s family will be joining them for dinner, and they will practice English during the meal. Kirsten knows that the meals, instead of being comfortable family time, will now be like lessons, and they will struggle to say things they would want to say because her family still hardly knows English. Worse yet, Miss Winston is cross with Kirsten because she can’t seem to memorize even her short poem.

Sneaking away to visit the Native American girl, who is called Singing Bird, gives Kirsten an escape from her struggles with English. Somehow, Kirsten and Singing Bird manage to communicate well enough with each other, even though neither of them speaks each other’s language. Then, Singing Bird takes Kirsten to see her village. To her surprise, Kirsten realizes that she has been gradually teaching Singing Bird English words without realizing it. However, Singing Bird’s people are going to be moving on soon. Kirsten’s uncle is correct that farming is driving away the animals the Native Americans depend on for food, and they’re suffering for it. Singing Bird invites Kirsten to come with her tribe when they leave, and it’s tempting to think of living an exciting life, traveling with Singing Bird and not going to school. But, is that what Kirsten really wants?

The book ends with a section of historical information about frontier schools in the mid-1800s.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

Along with the first book in the series, this is the book that I remember the best of the Kirsten books. I think I either didn’t read the others or didn’t finish them because there are some sad things in the Kirsten stories that I didn’t like. In the first book, Meet Kirsten, another child Kirsten befriends on the journey to Minnesota dies of cholera. It’s historically accurate that some children died of disease on the journey west, but it was still hard to take. I also talked about how the reason why families like Kirsten’s wanted to come to America was that Sweden was experiencing famine around this time. The first book didn’t say much about that, but in this book, Kirsten remembers experiencing hunger in Sweden when her father’s crops failed and how her little brother cried from hunger.

Kirsten understands the plight of the Native Americans when they have to move to a new area when their food supplies run low. However, when Singing Bird invites Kirsten to come with them, she realizes that would mean leaving the rest of her family, and she can’t do that. While it’s tempting to go with her friend and escape the problems in her life, Kirsten can’t do that without also giving up the good things in her life and trading the problems in her life for a different set of problems. Although there are appealing aspects to their lives, the Native Americans also have their own struggles. To use an old adage, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. People say it in different ways, but just because someone else’s situation is different doesn’t always mean that it’s better.

In this book, we also see what it’s like for Kirsten’s family as they begin learning English, so they can communicate with other people in their new country, and the children begin going to school. The little frontier school is different from other schools they’ve experienced before, and the teachers are strict. They have to be strict because some of the students are rough and fight with each other physically, and they have to make it clear that they’re not going to put up with that. This is a real-life aspect of schools from this time period. Fortunately, we never see the teacher actually using physical punishment against anybody. She just threatens to do it so her students will think twice about misbehaving.

When Miss Winston comes to board with Kirsten’s relatives, Kirsten thinks that everything is going to be worse, that she’s constantly going to be bombarded with lessons and the problems she’s been having at school. However, it turns into an opportunity for Kirsten and Miss Winston to get to know each other better. At first, Miss Winston can’t understand why Kirsten is having such a difficult time remembering her poem, even though it’s pretty short and easy. It’s partly because she’s still having difficulties with her English, but also, the content of the poem has no relation to anything currently happening in Kirsten’s life. It doesn’t interest her, and her mind is preoccupied with all the changes happening in her life, making it difficult for her to focus on the poem and remember it. When Miss Winston shows Kirsten a model of her father’s ship, it brings back memories of the ship Kirsten’s family traveled on when they came from Sweden. Miss Winston realizes that Kirsten has strong memories of the ship, so she gives her a different poem to memorize, one about a ship. Kirsten finds this poem easier to remember because it connects to memories she already has.

Although Miss Winston can be tough, she genuinely does care about Kirsten and looks for ways to help her learn. It just takes time to figure out the best way to help her, and Kirsten also needs time to adjust to her new language and new home. Once Kirsten sees that it’s possible for her to learn and for her new home to begin feeling like home, she begins to feel better about her new life in Minnesota.

I enjoyed the realistic aspects of the story and the references to historical events and real life conditions on the frontier. I think I liked this story better as an adult because I understood more about the historical background than I did when I was a kid. Parts of this series are still sad. Kirsten remembers people being sick and dying on the journey to America, and although she doesn’t go into detail about it, her family did suffer genuine hardship in Sweden.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

Little House in the Big Woods

Little House on the Prairie Series

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1932.

The story begins “60 years ago”, in a little house in the woods in Wisconsin, where a little girl named Laura lives with her parents and her two sisters, Mary and Carrie. Mary is older than Laura, and Carrie is younger. Their father hunts for meat for the family in the woods, and although Laura worries about the wolves in the woods, she and her family are safe in their little house.

Much of the family’s time is occupied with getting and preserving food. Food preservation is important because not every hunting trip is successful, and they need to make sure that they make the best use of every animal they get, as well as dairy products and produce. Laura and Carrie like to play among the food being stored in the attic. One of their favorite chores is helping their mother mold butter into shape with their butter mold, and often, the highlight of their day is getting something special to eat.

The story begins in winter, and Christmas is coming. The girls help their mother to prepare some special foods and treats, like apple pie and vinegar pie. They make candy by pouring a molasses syrup over snow to freeze it. The girls’ aunt, uncle, and cousins come to visit, staying overnight. The children have fun playing in the snow, making what they call “pictures” by throwing themselves down in the snow and seeing what type of shapes they can make with their bodies. The family has a feast, during which the children are not allowed to talk because “children should be seen and not heard”, but they don’t really mind because the food is really good, and they can have as much as they like. The children believe in Santa, and they are happy with the simple presents they receive: a pair of red mittens and a peppermint stick each.

Laura also receives a very special present: her first real rag doll. Her older sister already has a rag doll, but up to this point, Laura didn’t. Her only doll was made from a corn cob. Children of their time don’t get many presents, and the youngest children don’t get any at all or only have improvised toys. The other children aren’t angry or jealous because Laura has received this extra present because she is younger than they are. Only the babies in the family are younger than Laura, and the older chidren know that Laura didn’t already have a doll, like they do. Laura isn’t being favored; it’s just that she is now old enough to get this kind of present.

Although the family is safe when they’re in their log cabin, there is a genuine risk of attack from wild animals when they’re outside. Members of the family talk about close encounters they or other people had with panthers or bears. Laura’s Pa has a humorous encounter with a tree stump that he mistakes for a bear in the snow, while Ma actually slaps a bear because she mistook it for the family cow.

As the seasons change, the family activities change. They help relatives make maple syrup, and they have a dance. The girls have their first trip to town with their parents. Pa gathers honey, and Ma makes straw hats. Pa helps a relative with his harvest, and a cousin who plays mean tricks instead of helping gets his comeuppance.

I couldn’t find a copy of this book to read online, probably because of the racial language in the story, but there are shorter books on Internet Archive based on individual incidents in this story, like the winter and Christmas scenes. I thought those were the best parts of the story anyway. I would recommend those shorter books and picture books over the original for young children.

My Reaction

Things I Liked and Didn’t Like

It’s been a long time since I first read this book, and honestly, I didn’t like it as much as I did the first time. I remembered kind of liking it when I was a teen. I can’t remember exactly how old I was the first time I read it, I might have been a young teen or tween, but I know I didn’t read Little House on the Prairie books as a young child. My mother wasn’t really into the series herself, so she didn’t read them to me or recommend them much. (She preferred Nancy Drew, and really, so did I.) I know I lost interest in the series after reading only one or two more books because it seemed like that poor family was always getting sick everywhere they moved, and I found that depressing. This book series is one of the reasons why I don’t believe that exercise and organic food by themselves keep a person from being sick. This family had both, and it never helped them. During the course of the series, they catch everything from malaria to scarlet fever or meningoencephalitis, whichever it was that eventually made Mary go blind. It’s like all of the diseases my characters died from in the Oregon Trail computer game but in book form. Come to think of it, people on the Oregon Trail were also exercising and eating organic, and I’ve seen the real tombstones of pioneer children. I believe in sanitation and vaccinations.

As an adult, I found much of the first half this particular book boring or frustrating. That’s surprising because I usually like books with details about life in the past, and many of the details in this particular book echo stories passed down in my own family. (I also had ancestors with strict traditions about not working on Sundays, and they also ate cold meals on Sundays because they had to do all the Sunday cooking the day before.) I found some of the early parts of this story grating. The main reason is that this book is not actually a single story. There is no real, over-arching plot. It’s basically a collection of episodic reminiscences and family stories. I found some of them interesting, but not the early parts.

The book isn’t bad because the writing quality is pretty good, but in the first part of the book, there are long descriptions of hunting and food. I hated the descriptions of how they processed animals they hunted and butchered. I’m sure they’re true-to-life, but I’m the squeamish type. The parts where they talk about foods they like are better. They have kind of a cozy feel, with homemade meals and goodies that have kind of a nostalgic feel. However, I’m not that much of a foodie, and I’m not into “food porn” or long detailed descriptions of things other people are eating. There are limits to how much of that I can take before I start wanting more plot to happen. I think food descriptions are good when used to add color and atmosphere to a story, but it’s too much when they start turning into the story itself. Ideally, a good food description in the book will make me think of a story I liked the next time I eat that particular food. When it’s too overwhelming, there isn’t much of a story to be transported to. Part of the reason why Laura dwells on the subject of food is that this family has to struggle and work hard to get it. It’s not always guaranteed, and when there is something extra, there’s reason for celebration. They are poor, and treats are rare. I think that part of the reason why this book was so popular during the 1930s, when it was first published, was that many other children were growing up in a similar situation during the Great Depression.

When there is more action in the first part story, it’s typically that someone has a close encounter with a dangerous wild animal, like a panther or a bear. Most of this isn’t something that little Laura witnesses directly, but people will tell her stories about family members who had this happen to them. It happens repeatedly throughout the book. One really exciting encounter with a wild animal who wants to eat someone makes for a good adventure story, but when it happens repeatedly, the novelty goes out of it. It starts to become more like, “Oh, another animal attack incident story. Everybody’s got one.” Ma slapping the bear was something special, though. After the other descriptions of animal attacks, Pa’s mistaking a stump for a bear and Ma actually slapping a real bear felt like the punchline of a joke.

People in Laura’s family carry guns with them whenever they go out both for hunting purposes and because they are living in a real wilderness full of dangerous animals, and there is always a real possibility that they might have to defend themselves from a bear, panther, or wolf. They also eat bear when they can get one, and Laura likes the way it tastes. One of the chores that the kids find fun is when they help their father make his own bullets using molten lead in a bullet mold. I actually know someone who does this in modern times. Some modern gun hobbyists do, but I’m not into guns myself, so I didn’t find that as interesting as other types of home crafts. As the book continued and the seasons changed, there was more variety in activities for the family, and I started getting more interested.

The books in this series are semi-autobiographical, based on the real life and childhood of the author, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura Ingalls Wilder is actually the Laura from the book. That’s partly why the book isn’t structured liked a story so much as a collection of reminiscences, because this is just about what she remembers from her early life and family. I appreciated some of the small details of daily life, like the log cabin where the family lives, the butter mold with the strawberry shape, the trundle bed where the girls sleep, the lanterns they use for lighting, the family’s Sunday traditions, how the ladies prepared for their dance, and how they made maple syrup and straw hats. The parts of the story that I didn’t like so well were the parts where she goes on about the parts of life in the past that interest me the least. I don’t like hunting, I have no interest in guns, I don’t like hearing about butchering animals, and I’m not the kind of person who gets excited about animal attacks. (I never liked watching them on National Geographic, and I refuse to watch Shark Week or anything like it.) The parts I liked better were about using items that people just don’t use anymore and often don’t even have in their homes and the things the family did for fun and entertainment or celebrating holidays.

One of best scenes in the book, which is probably many people’s favorite, is the Christmas episode. It’s charming how Laura and her family make candy by pouring molasses syrup over snow. People can still do this today if they want to try an old-fashioned treat. It’s also heart-warming that they spend Christmas with visiting relatives, playing outside in the snow and enjoying a few simple presents, mostly handmade. They take great pleasure in simple activities and small presents because much of the rest of their lives were about chores and basic survival, and special treats and presents of any kind were rare. I thought about this book during the covid pandemic, when many people couldn’t safely visit with family or friends for Christmas. This is just one household of people, with just a few relatives visiting for a day, enjoying a few simple pleasures and homemade food and fun. It can be possible to enjoy very simple, homemade activities if you take the time to fully appreciate them and really throw yourself into making the most of them. The Christmas scene was the one that really stayed with me from my first reading when I was young, and it was the main reason why I wanted to read it again. I forgot most of the rest of the book.

Racial Language Issues

One thing that many people find distasteful about the Little House on the Prairie books these days is that books in the series have inappropriate racial language. This sort of thing went completely over my head when I was a kid because I didn’t know what some of these words meant, but it really jumps out at me now. At one point in the story, Laura’s father plays his fiddle and sings a folk song called Uncle Ned (that link is to a page from Missouri State University with words and music), which is about a black man who dies and uses the word “darkey” repeatedly. To be completely honest, I listened to the entire recording of this song, and I have no idea why anybody would like it. It’s not the only song Pa sings in the story about someone dying, and I can’t figure out why he thinks any songs like that are fun. They just sound depressing to me. But, Uncle Ned stands out from the other songs because of the racial slur.

I want to stress that it definitely is a slur. “Darkey” was not a polite term even during the time the story was set. People said it, but it was rude and insulting slang, not a word for polite conversation. Black people did have feelings about racial terms, and there were terms that were preferred and polite and terms that were considered demeaning and insulted and were known to be deliberately condescending. This particular term belongs to the second category. Black people weren’t always able to openly express their real feelings about the rude terms because of threatened violence for anything they might say, but their inability to speak openly about the issue doesn’t change the reality of the issue. There were 19th century white people who were well aware of what terms were polite and which were impolite, and they made active efforts to teach children to speak politely, such as the editors of this 19th century children’s magazine and Rev. Jacob Abbott, author of the Stories of Rainbow and Lucky (1859-1860), among other children’s books. Both of those sources are older than Laura Ingalls Wilder, pre-Civil War. Abbott made it a point to include a conversation between a grandfather and grandson in one of his Rainbow and Lucky stories to teach children the polite way to address black people of their time (“black” was one of the less preferred terms until the Civil Rights era, when people wanted to distance themselves from older racial terms and their accompanying emotional baggage, but the advice to care about others’ feelings and what they want to be called still holds true):

“I don’t know who they are, grandfather,” said he, after gazing at Handie and Rainbow a moment intently. “One of them is a black fellow.”
“Call him a colored fellow, Jerry,” said the old man. “They all like to be called colored people, and not black people. Every man a right to be called by whatever name he likes best himself.”
“But this is a boy,” replied Jerry.
“The same rule holds good in respect to boys,” added the old man. “Never call a boy by any name you think he don’t like; it only makes ill blood.”

True politeness requires consideration for others’ feelings, not denial of them, which would be the exact opposite of politeness by literal definition. Politeness is about avoiding what would offend others and emphasizing behaviors others find pleasant, not about doing only what pleases oneself or choosing to take personal offense at the idea of considering another’s feelings.

So, what’s the deal with Pa Ingalls? If other white adults of this era cared and tried to teach their children to care, why doesn’t he? Some people might point out that he’s just singing a song and that he didn’t write the song, which is true. In this particular instance, he’s effectively quoting someone else. That being said, this is just the first instance of questionable racial terms and attitudes in this series, and some of the later ones are worse. After thinking it over, I think what it comes down to is that the Ingalls family has little need to consider how people of other races feel specifically because of the way they live. Most of the time, there are simply no “others” in their lives to consider.

Nobody thinks anything of this type of language in the story or comments on it because, remember, this family lives in a log cabin in the woods with no close neighbors. They rarely go to town, and when they visit with other people, it’s usually other relatives, like the children’s aunt and uncle or grandparents. What I’m saying is that, when you live alone much of the time or surrounded only by people like you, especially close relatives, you don’t have to put much energy or thought into how to live with other people. The Ingalls family doesn’t have to think about any of this, so they just don’t think about any of this. But, when it comes right down to it, that’s certainly not the kind of life I’ve lived or the kind of life modern 21st century children live.

Since my first encounter with this book, I grew up in a city, in multicultural society full of people to interact with every day, and I got a higher education with a heavy focus on cultural issues. Some of the words in this book went over my head the first time, but I grew up. This book did not grow with me, and the racial language is one of the parts that not only doesn’t hold up but feels worse when you’re older and know better. This is not a book that has greater depth and provides more insight when you go back and read it as an adult with more life experience, as some children’s books do. Instead, it brings out some uncomfortable realizations about characters you liked before and the lives they live.

I’ve read that some newer printings of these books have changed the problematic parts, which is actually very common with older classic children’s books that are still in print. The same thing was done to old Stratemeyer Syndicate books like the Bobbsey Twins, Mary Poppins books, and various books by Enid Blyton. I was surprised when I found out what some of the original editions of those books were like. However, I haven’t seen a new copy of any of the Little House on the Prairie books to know how much has changed. There are parts of this series that I remembered from reading them the first time, mostly the Christmas scenes, but I’m just not really into this series. There are others I like better. Overall, I really prefer the Grandma’s Attic series to the Little House on the Prairie series because it also has details of daily life in the past, but I feel like it has more variety and warm humor to the stories in those books, and there are no inappropriate racial terms. My own grandmother grew up on a farm in Indiana, and she specifically recommended the Grandma’s Attic series to me, saying that it reminded her of her youth. She never mentioned or recommended Little House on the Prairie books, so I suppose she wasn’t as into those, either.

Posted on by TracyC

Sign of the Beaver

Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare, 1983.

The story begins in the late 1760s with twelve-year-old Matt’s father leaving him alone in the log cabin that he and his father built for their family in the Maine territory. The rest of their family is still in Massachusetts, and Matt’s father is going to get them and bring them to their new home. Their family will be the very first to settle in what will soon be a new township. However, for now, Matt is alone at their cabin, surrounded by miles of wilderness, while he waits for his father to return and the rest of his family to arrive. Matt will be looking after the cabin and the field of corn that he and his father planted, but he finds the silence and solitude unnerving.

Before he left, Matt’s father left his watch and rifle with Matt. After his father leaves, Matt tries the rifle. He doesn’t hit anything, and he decides that it will take getting used to. He learns to hunt with it, and Matt finds that he is very busy with hunting, fishing, and chores, which helps pass the time. Every day, he makes a notch on a stick to mark the days that pass.

Gradually, Matt becomes aware that someone is watching him. Someone seems to be hiding and following him. Since there are no other white families living for miles around, he can only assume that it must be an “Indian” (Native American). They know that there have been some in the area, although they haven’t really met any yet. Matt finds the prospect a little worrying because he isn’t sure what to expect from them, but his father always told him that, if he met an Indian, he should just be polite and respectful. Matt is nervous that whoever is watching him is also hiding from him, though.

One day, Matt hears someone wearing heavy boots tramping in the woods, and Matt thinks that maybe his father has returned early for some reason. However, it turns out to be a stranger in a blue army uniform. Although Matt has missed having company, he finds himself reluctant to talk much to this stranger, and he doesn’t want the man to know that he is there completely alone. Still, the stranger is hungry, so Matt agrees to let him share a meal with him. The stranger, who calls himself Ben, stays the night with Matt, uninvited. Matt can’t bring himself to turn away someone who needs hospitality in the wilderness, and Ben tells him stories of his past adventures. Matt still has misgivings about Ben, and he’s sure his stories are tall tales. When Ben mentions leaving a town because there was trouble there, Matt thinks maybe Ben ran away because he’s a criminal. Matt plans to stay awake that night to keep an eye on Ben, but he eventually falls asleep. When he wakes up, Ben is gone, and so is his father’s rifle. Ben is a thief! Matt realizes that he was right to be suspicious of Ben and is angry that he let him get away with stealing the rifle.

Without that rifle, Matt can’t hunt. He can still feed himself through fishing, but he loses more of his supplies when he forgets to properly bar the door while he’s out fishing, and a bear eats most of the food in the cabin. Reduced to eating only fish, Matt gives in to temptation and tries to get some honey from some bees he finds in a nearby tree. It’s a bad idea, but this decision changes everything for Matt.

Matt is badly stung by the bees, and when he tries to escape them in the water, he nearly drowns. Fortunately, Matt is saved from drowning by the Indians who have been watching him. It turns out to be a grandfather and his grandson. The grandfather, Saknis, takes Matt back to his cabin, brings him food, and treats his wounds. When he realizes that Matt hurt his ankle and lost his boot in the water, he gives Matt a crutch to use for walking and a new pair of moccasins to wear.

Matt is both grateful for this much-needed help but also very self-conscious about it. He can tell that the grandson, Attean, doesn’t like him and thinks that he’s a fool for getting hurt like this, which is embarrassing. Matt also thinks that he should repay them for what they’ve given him, but he doesn’t have much to offer. The only thing he can think of to give them is the only book he owns, a copy of Robinson Crusoe. Matt is embarrassed when he realizes that the Saknis can’t read, and he thinks maybe he will be offended at this type of gift, but the older man realizes that Matt’s knowledge of reading is a gift that they badly need.

In broken English, the old man explains that his people have made treaties with white people before, but because they can’t read English, they never really know what’s written in the treaties. When white people break the treaties or tell them that they’re no longer allowed in certain areas of land, there isn’t much they can do, since they don’t even know for certain what was in the original agreements. He realizes that his people can’t afford to be ignorant. There are more white people moving into their territory all the time, and his people will have to know how to deal with them. Therefore, Saknis proposes a kind of treaty with Matt: they will continue to bring Matt food if Matt teaches Attean to read.

Attean immediately protests this plan. He really doesn’t like Matt, or any white people in general, and he doesn’t want these reading lessons. However, his grandfather is firm that this is something he needs to do. Matt also isn’t sure about this plan. He does owe them for their help, but he’s never taught anybody to read before. His own early lessons didn’t go particularly well, although he likes reading Robinson Crusoe now. Also, Matt thinks of Attean as being a “savage” and a “heathen” who doesn’t even really want to learn, so he’s not confident that the reading lessons are going to go well. Still, Matt does owe them for saving him and could use their continued help while he recovers from his injuries, so all he can do is try.

When Attean gets frustrated during the first reading lesson and storms out of Matt’s cabin, Matt thinks that the lessons are already over. Yet, Attean does return for more lessons. Gradually, Matt thinks of ways to make the lessons more interesting to Attean, reading the most exciting parts of Robinson Crusoe out loud to Attean to get him interested in reading the story himself and finding out what will happen to the main character. It isn’t easy to get Attean interested in learning because Attean is initially determined not to be interested or impressed by anything Matt has to say.

When Matt becomes curious about some of the things Attean and his tribe do, like how Attean hunts rabbits without a gun, Attean opens up a little and shows Matt some of the things he knows. Matt begins to admire some of the unique skills Attean shows him and learns to use them for himself. Matt is aware that his first efforts must look clumsy and childish to Attean as he tries to learn skills that Attean has known for years, but it puts the boys on a more equal footing with each other. Each of them has something to learn from the other, and it’s all right for each of them to look a little awkward to the other while learning. Matt gets embarrassed sometimes when he does something clumsy in front of Attean, but he learns that he must also persevere. Attean teaches him some good, practical skills for making things without using some of the manufactured goods that he and his father brought with them from Massachusetts. When Matt loses his only fish hook, Attean shows him how to make a new one. Attean teaches Matt to be self-reliant and to use new methods to accomplish his goals.

During the part where Matt reads the part of Robinson Crusoe where Robinson Crusoe rescues the man he calls Friday, and Friday, out of gratitude, becomes his slave, Attean protests that would never happen in real life. Attean says that he would rather die than become a slave. Matt is surprised because he never really thought that much about how someone like Friday would feel in real life. Matt learns to look at the story as Attean would, reading the best pieces to him, the ones that emphasize the friendship between the two characters rather than servitude.

Gradually, Matt and Attean become friends. Matt doesn’t think he’s very good at teaching Attean to read, but Attean does slowly learn. Although Attean resists learning to read because he’s trying to prove that he doesn’t need this skill that he associates only with white people, his spoken English becomes better as he and Matt talk. Attean admits that he tells parts of Robinson Crusoe to his people, and they enjoy hearing them, so Matt moves on to stories from his father’s Bible. Attean finds the Bible stories interesting and compares them to stories that his people already tell. (It is interesting, for example, how many civilizations around the world tell stories about great floods.) The boys are fascinated by the common themes in their stories.

The boys also enjoy doing things together, and Matt feels less lonely when Attean comes to visit. Matt doesn’t always like Attean because he has a disdainful attitude toward him, but they learn to trust each other, and they find interesting things to do together. Matt comes to realize that his irritation at Attean’s attitude is because it’s so difficult to earn Attean’s respect, and he really wants Attean’s respect. Although Matt doesn’t like Attean’s attitude toward white people, he does agree with Attean about some things, and he has to admit that he cares about what Attean thinks. Matt does get some respect from Attean later when the boys have a hair-raising encounter with a bear. Attean is the one who actually kills it, but Matt proves his usefulness during the struggle. Matt also comes to understand Attean’s resentment against white people when Attean eventually tells him that he’s an orphan and that his parents were killed by white people. That’s why he lives with his grandparents.

As time goes by, Matt becomes increasingly worried about whether or not his family will ever arrive. He worries that maybe something happened to his father and that the rest of the family won’t know where the cabin is and won’t be able to find him. When it passes the time when his family should have arrived, Matt fears that maybe they will never come at all. What if he is left alone? He has survived so far, with some help from Attean and his people, but can he live alone forever? Or could there be a place for him among Attean’s people?

Saknis has also been thinking about this, and he has noticed that Matt’s family has not yet come. He knows that it would be dangerous for the boy to remain alone in the cabin when winter comes. As the seasons change, the Native Americans are preparing to move to their winter hunting grounds. Saknis invites Matt to come with them, and Matt has to decide whether to accept the offer or stay and wait for his family.

This book is a Newbery Honor Book. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

This story reminds me a little of The Courage of Sarah Noble, where an 18th century white child who is afraid of Native Americans comes to learn more about them by living with them and interacting with them. I actually read The Sign of the Beaver when I was a child, and I only read The Courage of Sarah Noble as an adult. I’m not sure now if I prefer one of these books over the other. For a long time, I forgot the title of The Sign of the Beaver, although I did like this book the first time I read it. I remembered the concept of the boy living alone while he waited for the rest of the family to join him. One part that stuck in my mind the most was the part near the end of the story where Matt makes a cradle because he knows that his mother was expecting a baby when he last saw her and thinks that it would be nice to have a cradle ready for his new younger sibling, but when his family arrives, he is told that the baby died. That tragic image just stayed with me for years.

Some of the prejudiced language in the story, like “savage” and “heathen” and some anti-Catholic talk from Ben early on, is a little uncomfortable, but this is one of those stories about changing attitudes and overcoming prejudice. The main character has to show some fearful and/or prejudiced thoughts toward Native American initially for readers to appreciate how far he comes and how much his thinking changes after he makes friends with them and learns more about them.

Ben, of course, is a villain character, so his prejudiced talk is a reflection of that. He’s selfish and a thief, so his views of other people are based on what puts him in the best light or justifies things that he’s done. When he talks about the people of the last town he was in being against him and making trouble so he had to leave, both the readers and Matt realize that Ben was the one who started the trouble. Ben blames other people for problems he creates himself. The stories he tells Matt about his earlier, supposedly brave adventures are based around the French and Indian War, which is where the Catholics enter the discussion.

Several times during the story, Attean uses the word “squaw” to refer to women. I didn’t think too much about that sort of thing when I was a child because I assumed that both the author and characters in books that used that term knew what it meant and were using it correctly. Since then, I’ve heard that it actually has a rather vulgar meaning, although I’ve also heard conflicting information that it’s not always vulgar. The contradictory accounts make it a little confusing, but according to the best explanations I’ve read, the contradictions about the meaning of this word have to do with similar-sounding words in different Native American languages. Not all Native American tribes have the same traditional language, and some have words that sound like “squaw” and refer to females in a general way, while others have words with a similar sound that refer to female anatomy in a more vulgar way. For that reason, something that might seem innocuous to one native speaker might sound crude to another, and non-native speakers of any of the languages involved may not fully understand all the connotations of the word. In the end, I’m not sure how much of this the author of this book understood, but my conclusion is that it’s best not to use certain words unless you’re sure of their meaning, not only to you but to your audience. I only use the word here to make it clear which word appears in the book. Other than that, I don’t think this word is a necessary one, at least not for me. I understand what Attean is referring to in the context of the story, and I think that’s what really matters in this particular case. Whether that’s the right word for Attean’s tribe to use at this point in history would be more a matter for a linguist. I’m willing to accept it in the book as long as readers understand the context of the situation and are content to leave the word in the book and not use it themselves outside the context of the story.

When Attean talks about women in the story, it’s typically to point out certain types of work that he considers women’s work instead of men’s work. Matt is a little offended sometimes when Attean tells him that some chore he’s doing is for women instead of men. Matt’s family doesn’t have the same standards for dividing up chores as Attean’s tribe does, and the fact is that Matt is living alone at the moment. There are no women in Matt’s cabin, only Matt. Any chore that needs to be done right now is Matt’s to do because there simply is no one else to do any of it for him. I think when Attean tells him that he’s doing women’s work, he’s trying to needle Matt because, otherwise, he comes off as sounding a little dense. Sure, Attean. We’ll just have the women who aren’t here do this stuff that needs doing right now. During the course of the story, Matt comes to appreciate how the Native Americans live differently because it makes sense for the place where they live and their circumstances, but this is one instance where Attean could be a little more understanding about Matt’s circumstances.

One thing that I had completely forgotten about in this story was the part where Matt thinks about how Attean smells bad. Earlier, when I did a post about Mystery of the Pirate’s Ghost by Elizabeth Honness, I was irritated at the author for having one of the characters imagining smelly Native Americans because I had never heard of that as a stereotype before (I thought at the time), and I didn’t know where that idea came from. A site reader suggested that the trope came from the Little House on the Prairie series because there is talk like that in those books, but The Sign of the Beaver actually offers an immediate explanation as soon as Matt thinks about the cause of the smell. Matt realizes that Attean has smeared a kind of smelly grease on his body that is meant to repel mosquitoes. Matt has heard of people doing this before, and he understands that there is a useful purpose behind it, but he just hates the smell so much that he thinks he’d rather just put up with the mosquitoes. That explanation really helps to put everything into context. When there’s no explanation about things like this in stories, it makes it sound like Native Americans are just smelly because they’re “savages” who don’t bathe or something, but when you hear the explanation, it’s just that the smell is an inconvenient side effect from something that has a real, practical purpose. It might be unappealing to Matt, but there is a point to it. So, on the one hand, I feel a little bad about getting down on Elizabeth Honness for throwing that idea into her story without an apparent basis, but still irritated because, if she knew that was the explanation, she could have said something about it instead of just throwing that out there, like everyone reading the story would already know. I have similar feelings about some of the things Laura Ingalls Wilder put in her books, too. Context is important, and some authors are better at providing it than others. I also think that context is something that books from the late 20th century and early 21st century often provide better than books from earlier decades, although there are some exceptions.

At the end of the story, we don’t know for sure whether Matt and Attean will meet again. When Matt’s family arrives, they tell him that other white families will be arriving soon. Matt knows that the tribe he befriended will likely lose their hunting grounds to the town that will be built there. Matt is concerned for their future, but he is glad to be reunited with his family and still considers Attean his friend.