Long Winter, Little House, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Book

Synopsis

The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as Pa, Ma, Laura, Mary, Carrie, and little Grace bravely face the hard winter of 1880-81 in their little house in the Dakota Territory. Blizzards cover the little town with snow, cutting off all supplies from the outside. Soon there is almost no food left, so young Almanzo Wilder and a friend make a dangerous trip across the prairie to find some wheat. Finally a joyous Christmas is celebrated in a very unusual way in this most exciting of all the Little House books.

Annotation

Originally published in 1940, The Long Winter is the sixth book in the Little House Series.

Donna Freedman - Children's Literature

This traditional paperback-sized reprint should be easier for a new generation of fans to keep track of, although older fans will miss the wonderful Garth Williams illustrations that made the original paperbacks and hardbacks such a treat. A line on the cover trumpets "30 million copies sold," and there is a reason for that: after all these years, it's still a compelling story. Modern kids who think "deprivation" means having the cable TV go out will be astonished by the fortitude of the hardy Ingalls family, who holed up in the kitchen during a blizzard season, living on bread and tea and twisting hay into sticks to keep the stove going. Wilder's short, declarative style makes the book accessible to kids who are just beginning to read on their own, and her gripping story will keep them turning the pages. 2003 (orig. 1940), Avon Books/HarperCollins, Ages 9 up.

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Biography

Millions of readers have read -- and re-read -- the Little House on the Prairie books, Laura Ingalls Wilder�s charming, fascinating tales of her own girlhood spent in the American West. The series, which is both a document of frontier-town America in the 19th century and a beautifully told coming-of-age story, is beloved by readers everywhere for their universal truths about family, love, and endurance in the face of hardship.

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Customer Reviews

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Great Edition!by Anonymous

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October 08, 2004: The collectors edition is very nice and the color pictures an d glossy pages make this very good book even better. This is my favorite story in the Little House series about the famous winter of 1868-69 when Laura nd her family where living in the little town of De Smet. I wonder if the blizzards really did last until late April, or was that added for drama? I knew the winter was bad, but not that bad!

This is one of the greatest books ever!!!!!!by Anonymous

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June 30, 2004: This is a fabulous book, and I hope that you enjoy it too!

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Fact File

Name:
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Also Known As:
Mrs. A.J. Wilder

Date of Birth:
February 07, 1867

Place of Birth:
Pepin, Wisconsin

Date of Death
February 10, 1957

Place of Death
Mansfield, Missouri

Awards:
Seven-time Newbery Honor recipient; Laura Ingalls Wilder Award established by Association for Library Service to Children, 1954

* Laura Ingalls Wilder's official web site

Biography

"I wanted the children now to understand more about the beginnings of things, to know what is behind the things they see -- what it is that made America as they know it," Laura Ingalls Wilder once said. Wilder was born in 1867, more than 60 years before she began writing her autobiographical fiction, and had witnessed the transformation of the American frontier from a barely populated patchwork of homestead lots to a bustling society of towns, trains and telephones.

Early pictures of Laura Ingalls show a young woman in a buttoned, stiff-collared dress, but there's nothing prim or quaint about the childhood she memorialized in her Little House books. Along with the expected privations of prairie life, the Ingalls family faced droughts, fires, blizzards, bears and grasshopper plagues. Although she didn't graduate from high school, Wilder had enough schooling to get a teaching license, and took her first teaching job at the age of 15.

Later, Wilder and her husband settled on a farm in the Missouri Ozarks, where Wilder began writing about farm life for newspapers and magazines. She didn't try her hand at books until 1930, when she started chronicling her childhood at the urging of her daughter Rose. Her first effort at an autobiography, Pioneer Girl, failed to find a publisher, but it spurred a second effort, a set of eight "historical novels," as Wilder called them, based on her own life.

Little House in the Big Woods (1932) was an instant hit. It was followed by a new volume every two years or so, and the series' success snowballed until thousands of fans were waiting eagerly for each new installment. "Ms. Wilder has caught the very essence of pioneer life, the satisfaction of hard work, the thrill of accomplishment, safety and comfort made possible through resourcefulness and exertion," said the New York Times review of Little House on the Prairie (1935).

In 1954, the American Library Association established the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award to honor the lifetime achievement of a children's author or illustrator; Wilder herself was the first recipient. After Wilder's death in 1957, historical societies sprang up to preserve what they could of her childhood homes, and her manuscripts and journals provided the material for several more books. A TV series based on the books, Little House on the Prairie, ran from 1974 to 1984 and renewed interest in Wilder�s work and life. More recently, fictionalized biographies of her daughter, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother have appeared.

Wilder's books have now been translated into over 40 languages, and still provide an engrossing history lesson for young readers, as well as insight into the frontier values that Wilder once catalogued as "courage, self-reliance, independence, integrity and helpfulness" -- values, in her words, worth "as much today as they ever were to help us over the rough places."

Good to Know

Wilder's daughter, the writer Rose Wilder Lane, helped revise her mother's books; the collaboration was so extensive that one biographer proposed Rose was the "real" author of the Little House books. Most agree that Rose was, if not author or co-author, instrumental in suggesting the project to her mother and shaping it for publication.

After her books were published, fan mail for Wilder poured in; among more than a thousand cards and gifts she received for her birthday in 1951 was a cablegram of congratulations from General Douglas MacArthur.

Wilder, who had grown up making long journeys by covered wagon, took her first airplane ride at the age of 87, on a visit to Rose in Danbury, Connecticut.

From the Publisher

The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as Pa, Ma, Laura, Mary, Carrie, and little Grace bravely face the hard winter of 1880-81 in their little house in the Dakota Territory. Blizzards cover the little town with snow, cutting off all supplies from the outside. Soon there is almost no food left, so young Almanzo Wilder and a friend make a dangerous trip across the prairie to find some wheat. Finally a joyous Christmas is celebrated in a very unusual way in this most exciting of all the Little House books.

Donna Freedman - Children's Literature

This traditional paperback-sized reprint should be easier for a new generation of fans to keep track of, although older fans will miss the wonderful Garth Williams illustrations that made the original paperbacks and hardbacks such a treat. A line on the cover trumpets "30 million copies sold," and there is a reason for that: after all these years, it's still a compelling story. Modern kids who think "deprivation" means having the cable TV go out will be astonished by the fortitude of the hardy Ingalls family, who holed up in the kitchen during a blizzard season, living on bread and tea and twisting hay into sticks to keep the stove going. Wilder's short, declarative style makes the book accessible to kids who are just beginning to read on their own, and her gripping story will keep them turning the pages. 2003 (orig. 1940), Avon Books/HarperCollins, Ages 9 up.

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Product Details

ISBN: 0060581859
ISBN-13: 9780060581855
Format: Paperback, 352pp
Publisher: Harpercollins Childrens Books
Pub. Date: May 2004
Edition Description: Full Color Collector's Edition
Sales Rank: 19,469
Age Range: 8 to 12
Series: Little House, #6

Table of Contents
Read an Excerpt
Read a Sample Chapter

	Make Hay While the Sun Shines	1
	An Errand to Town	15
	Fall of the Year	27
	October Blizzard	37
	After the Storm	45
	Indian Summer	54
	Indian Warning	59
	Settled in Town	66
	Cap Garland	75
	Three Days' Blizzard	96
	Pa Goes to Volga	105
	Alone	116
	We'll Weather the Blast	124
	One Bright Day	131
	No Trains	139
	Fair Weather	149
	Seed Wheat	161
	Merry Christmas	168
	Where There's a Will	188
	Antelope!	199
	The Hard Winter	212
	Cold and Dark	225
	The Wheat in the Wall	242
	Not Really Hungry	252
	Free and Independent	255
	Breathing Spell	260
	For Daily Bread	264
	Four Days' Blizzard	285
	The Last Mile	294
	It Can't Beat Us	308
	Waiting for the Train	313
	The Christmas Barrel	322
	Christmas in May	326

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Make Hay While the Sun Shines

The mowing machine's whirring sounded cheerfully from the old buffalo wallow south of the claim shanty, where bluestem grass stood thick and tall and Pa was cutting it for hay.

The sky was high and quivering with heat over the shimmering prairie. Half-way down to sunset, the sun blazed as hotly as at noon. The wind was scorching hot. But Pa had hours of mowing yet to do before he could stop for the night.

Laura drew up a pailful of water from the well at the edge of the Big Slough. She rinsed the brown jug till it was cool to her hand. Then she filled it with the fresh, cool water, corked it tightly, and, started with it to the hayfield.

Swarms of little white butterflies hovered over the path. A dragon-fly with gauzy wings swiftly chased a gnat. On the stubble of cut grass the striped gophers were scampering. All at once they ran for their lives and dived into their holes. Then Laura saw a swift shadow and looked up at the eyes and the claws of a hawk overhead. But all the little gophers were safe in their holes.

Pa was glad to see Laura with the water-jug. He got down from the mowing machine and drank a mouthful. "Ah! that hits the spot!" he said, and tipped up the jug again. Then he corked it, and setting it on the ground he covered it with cut grass.

"This sun almost makes a fellow want a bunch of sprouts to make a shade," he Joked. He was really glad there were no trees; he had grubbed so many sprouts from his clearing in the Big Woods, every summer. Here on the Dakota prairies there was not a single tree, not one sprout, not a bit of shade anywhere.

"A manworks better when he's warmed up, anyway!" Pa said cheerfully, and chirruped to the horses. Sam and David plodded on, drawing the machine. The long, steel-toothed blade went steadily whirring against the tall grass and laid it down flat. Pa rode high on the open iron seat, watching it lie down, his hand on the lever.

Laura sat in the grass to watch him go once around. The heat there smelted as good as an oven when bread is baking. The little brown-and-yellow striped gophers were hurrying again, all about her. Tiny birds fluttered and flew to cling to bending grass-stems, balancing lightly. A striped garter snake came flowing and curving through the forest of grass. Sitting hunched with her chin on her knees, Laura felt suddenly as big as a mountain when the snake curved up its head and stared at the high wall of her calico skirt.

Its round eyes were shining like beads, and its tongue was flickering so fast that it looked like a tiny jet of steam. The whole bright-striped snake had a gentle look. Laura knew that garter snakes will not harm anyone, and they are good to have on a farm because they eat the insects that spoil crops.

It stretched its neck low again and, making a perfectly square turn in itself because it could not climb over Laura, it went flowing around her and away in the grass.

Then the mowing machine whirred louder and the horses came nodding their heads slowly in time with their feet. David jumped when Laura spoke almost under his nose.

"Whoa!" Pa said, startled. "Laura! I thought you'd gone. Why are you hiding in the grass like a prairie chicken?"

"Pa," Laura said, "why can't I help you make hay? Please let me, Pa. Please."

Pa lifted his hat and ran his fingers through his sweat-damp hair, standing it all on end and letting the wind blow through it. "You're not very big nor strong, little Half-Pint."

"I'm going on fourteen," Laura said. "I can help, Pa. I know I can."

The mowing machine had cost so much that Pa had no money left to pay for help. He could not trade work, because there were only a few homesteaders in this new country and they were busy on their own claims. But he needed help to stack the hay.

"Well," Pa said, "maybe you can. We'll try it. If you can, by George! we'll get this haying done all by ourselves!"

Laura could see that the thought was a load off Pa's mind and she hurried to the shanty to tell Ma.

"Why, I guess you can," Ma said doubtfully. She did not like to see women working in the fields. Only foreigners did that. Ma and her girls were Americans, above doing men's work. But Laura's helping with the hay would solve the problem. She decided, "Yes, Laura, you may."

Carrie eagerly offered to help. "I'll carry the drinking water out to you. I'm big enough to carry the jug!" Carrie was almost ten, but small for her age.

"And I'll do your share of the housework, besides mine," Mary offered happily. She was proud that she could wash dishes and make beds as well as Laura, though she was blind.

The sun and hot wind cured the cut grass so quickly that Pa raked it up next day. He raked it into long windrows, then he raked the windrows into big haycocks. And early the next morning, while the dawn was still cool and meadow-larks were singing, Laura rode to the field with Pa in the hayrack.

There Pa walked beside the wagon and drove the horses between the rows of haycocks. At every haycock he stopped the horses and pitched the hay up into the hayrack. It came tumbling loosely over the high edge and Laura trampled it down. Up and down and back and forth she trampled the loose hay with all the might of her legs, while the forkfuls kept coming over and falling, and she went on trampling while the wagon jolted on to the next haycock.

Read a Sample Chapter

The Long Winter

By Laura Wilder

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

ISBN: 0060581859

Chapter One

Make Hay While The Sun Shines

The mowing machine's whirring sounded cheerfully from the old buffalo wallow south of the claim shanty, where bluestem grass stood thick and tall and Pa was cutting it for hay.

The sky was high and quivering with heat over the shimmering prairie. Half-way down to sunset, the sun blazed as hotly as at noon. The wind was scorching hot. But Pa had hours of mowing yet to do before he could stop for the night.

Laura drew up a pailful of water from the well at the edge of the Big Slough. She rinsed the brown jug till it was cool to her hand. Then she filled it with the fresh, cool water, corked it tightly, and started with it to the hayfield.

Swarms of little white butterflies hovered over the path. A dragon-fly with gauzy wings swiftly chased a gnat. On the stubble of cut grass the striped gophers were scampering. All at once they ran for their lives and dived into their holes. Then Laura saw a swift shadow and looked up at the eyes and the claws of a hawk overhead. But all the little gophers were safe in their holes.

Pa was glad to see Laura with the water-jug. He got down from the mowing machine and drank a mouthful. "Ah! that hits the spot!" he said, and tipped up the jug again. Then he corked it, and setting it on the ground he covered it with cut grass.

"This sunalmost makes a fellow want a bunch of sprouts to make a shade," he joked. He was really glad there were no trees; he had grubbed so many sprouts from his clearing in the Big Woods, every summer. Here on the Dakota prairies there was not a single tree, not one sprout, not a bit of shade anywhere.

"A man works better when he's warmed up, anyway!" Pa said cheerfully, and chirruped to the horses. Sam and David plodded on, drawing the machine. The long, steel-toothed blade went steadily whirring against the tall grass and laid it down flat. Pa rode high on the open iron seat, watching it lie down, his hand on the lever.

Laura sat in the grass to watch him go once around. The heat there smelled as good as an oven when bread is baking. The little brown-and-yellow striped gophers were hurrying again, all about her. Tiny birds fluttered and flew to cling to bending grass-stems, balancing lightly. A striped garter snake came flowing and curving through the forest of grass. Sitting hunched with her chin on her knees, Laura felt suddenly as big as a mountain when the snake curved up its head and stared at the high wall of her calico skirt.