Category Archives: Little House

Little House Books in Chronological Order

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the Little House books
via email lately, and I thought I’d post the answers to some of them
here so others can find them.


Where can I find a listing of all the Little House books in order?

Here you go:

Marthatall
Books about Martha Morse, Laura’s great-grandmother, by Melissa Wiley:

Little House in the Highlands
The Far Side of the Loch
Down to the Bonny Glen
Beyond the Heather Hills

Books about Charlotte Tucker, Laura’s grandmother, by Melissa Wiley:

Little House by Boston Bay
On Tide Mill Lane
The Road from Roxbury
Across the Puddingstone Dam

Books about Caroline Quiner Ingalls, Laura’s mother, by Maria Wilkes & Celia Wilkins:

Little House in Brookfield
Little Town at the Crossroads
Little Clearing in the Woods
On Top of Concord Hill
Across the Rolling River
Little City by the Lake
A Little House of Their Own

Books by and about Laura Ingalls Wilder (the originals):

Little House in the Big Woods
Little House on the Prairie
Farmer Boy
On the Banks of Plum Creek
By the Shores of Silver Lake
The Long Winter
Little Town on the Prairie
These Happy Golden Years
The First Four Years

Books about Laura’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, by her heir, Roger Lea MacBride:

Little House on Rocky Ridge
Little Farm in the Ozarks
In the Land of the Big Red Apple
The Other Side of the Hill
Little Town in the Ozarks
New Dawn on Rocky Ridge
On the Banks of the Bayou
Bachelor Girl

Important note: A few of the Martha, Charlotte, Caroline, and
Rose books were republished in heavily abridged editions. You can
recognize the abridgments by their photographic covers (pictures of
real girls). The orginal, unabridged editions have illustrated covers.
I highly recommend looking for the originals! For more information,
visit my Little House FAQ page. A list of sources for the unabridged editions can be found here.

For a listing of other books by and about Laura Ingalls Wilder, visit the publisher’s website:  littlehousebooks.com.

Martha illustration by Renee Graef.

Beautiful Handiwork

Well, I’m pretty blown away this morning by the photos in this post at Pondered in My Heart—and by the tremendous compliments paid me by her family’s enthusiasm for my Martha and Charlotte books. There is nothing more exciting to an author than seeing how her books have come to life for someone. Kimberlee’s daughter Mary Rose is apparently a big fan, and her thoughtful big sister made her some Charlotte-inspired goodies for Christmas: a handmade copybook, Blue Back Speller, and gorgeously illustrated alphabet book. Truly lovely work, Lydia. I am very impressed.

And wait until you see the handcarved toys and spindles Kimberlee’s sons made for their sisters. What a family!

Speller
By the way, the original "Blue Back Speller"—Noah Webster’s American Spelling Book, originally published in 1783 and used by generations of American schoolchildren—has been republished in a facsimile edition. That’s what I used to help me write some of the scenes in Charlotte’s schoolhouse. You can read most of it online at Google Books.

But I have to say, I think I prefer Lydia’s version!

Bannocks for the Feast of St. Andrew

Standrew
I was reading a lovely post about St. Andrew by Elena at My Domestic Church and, to my surprise, stumbled upon my own name. Elena mentions that St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, and adds:

Our family has been reading Melissa Wiley’s Martha
Books for almost nine months now and these stories are set in Scotland.
Young Martha, the laird’s daughter, is always helping in the kitchen
with baking bannocks, or eating bannocks, so the kids and I have
decided to actually make bannocks tomorrow in celebration of the feast
day. I’ll post pictures and let you know if they turn out okay!

I look forward to seeing those pictures!

I posted a recipe for bannocks here a long while back.

And here’s a Martha/Scotland-related resource & activities page.

Poetry Friday: The Solitary Reaper

One of the books I read during my research for the Martha Books was Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland in A.D. 1803. The time period was just about right; Little House in the Highlands is set in 1795, and change came slowly to those remote glens.

Dorothy traveled with her brother, William, and their friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (Ooh! Now there’s an idea for a novel!) In her journal she wrote,

"It was harvest-time, and the fields were quietly (might I be allowed to say pensively?) enlivened by small companies of reapers. It is not uncommon in the more lonely parts of the Highlands to see a single person so employed. The following poem was suggested to Wm. by a beautiful sentence in Thomas Wilkinson’s Tour in Scotland."

And then she copied out William’s poem (written two years later), "The Solitary Reaper."

A note in my Wm. Wordsworth collection tells me that the line from Thomas Wilkinson is this:

"Passed a female who was reaping alone; she sung in Erse, as she bended over her sickle; the sweetest human voice I ever heard: her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious, long after they were heard no more."

I love to know the story behind a poem, a novel, a painting. Here is William’s poem, all the lovelier to me for knowing what sparked it in his mind.

The Solitary Reaper
by William Wordsworth

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt

More welcome notes to weary bands

Of travellers in some shady haunt,

Among Arabian sands:

A voice so shrilling ne’er was heard

In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?—

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again?

Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o’er the sickle bending;—

I listen’d, motionless and still;

And, as I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more.

Poetryfridaybutton

This week’s Poetry Friday round-up can be found at Hip Writer Mama.

What’s Poetry Friday? Susan Thomsen explains at PoetryFoundation.org.

Two More Places to Get Unabridged Martha & Charlotte Books

UPDATED! A reader reports that the Loftus Store shipped her one of the old (unabridged) books, and one of the new (abridged). If you order from these sources and you want the unabridged editions, be sure to request the versions with the illustrated (painted) covers. The photo covers are the abridged editions.

Alicia, aka Love2Learn Mom, has just returned from a trip to South Dakota. One stop on her route was De Smet, the town Charles and Caroline Ingalls settled in during By the Shores of Silver Lake. Alicia writes that she found

two gift shops that still had quite a few copies of the [unabridged] Little House
prequels available for sale (and were willing to ship telephone orders).

Here’s the info in case you’d like to pass it along…

The Loftus Store
www.loftusstore.com
1-866-335-3271

Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society
1-800-880-3383
This one had at least five copies of most of the books

They have Caroline books as well as my Martha and Charlotte novels.

Another Source for Unabridged Martha & Charlotte Books

Karen E. noticed that a1books.com has a selection of the original, unabridged editions of some of my Martha and Charlotte books for reasonable prices, if you’re still looking.

The abridged versions are in the bookstores now, and please note that although the covers say "by Melissa Wiley," I declined to have any involvement in the cutting down. I have not read them. I did notice that one of my fairy tales in Highlands was pulled out and reprinted in the back of the book, under a heading about how "Martha loved when her mother told her stories." Eek.

Unabridged Martha and Charlotte at FUN Books

The always delightful Nancy of FUN Books—one of my favorite homeschooling resource suppliers—has let me know that she has copies of all my unabridged Martha and Charlotte books in stock, except for The Road from Roxbury. That’s FUN as in Family Unschooling Network, and if you haven’t explored their collection of fun educational materials, you are in for a treat.

("What do you mean, unabridged?" Explanation here and here.)