On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder (published 1937) is kind of the last “little kid” book about Laura in the author’s fictionalized memoirs. Laura is about seven and, along with her older sister Mary, On the Banks of Plum Creek tells her childhood adventures in a sod house and in a small frame house until she is about nine.
Through those years, Laura learns a lot of lessons, beginning with the need to be obedient (or there are consequences) to the difficulties to being a child. She goes to school for the first time in her life and deals with an unpleasant girl. She enjoys nature but also learns to sit and do what is required, like give her precious doll to a younger child. These are also the years of a grasshopper (really locust) plague that destroyed all living things in the midwest. Despite her disgust, Laura learns to deal with this too, since she has no other choice.
I have lots of favorite scenes from this book, but one of them is when their mother and father didn’t return from town, and it started to snow. While wanting to make sure they had enough wood to stay warm, Laura and Mary manage to bring the entire woodpile inside, just in case. I also really like when Nellie Olsen, the mean girl from school, gets her come-upance at Laura and Mary’s party outdoors on Plum Creek.
Of the three I’ve reread, I’d put this as my favorite above Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie. I think the episodes from Laura’s life are amusing. Even more, her “growing up moments” give it a poignant sweet feeling as we read.
