The mention of Laura Ingalls Wilder conjures up a variety of images to Americans today. Some know her only through the long-running television series Little House on the Prairie, where she was served up as a plucky but stereotyped heroine week after week. Readers and historians respect her because of her nine-volume series of autobiographical accounts of life on the frontier, written in the 1930s and 1940s. Her Little House books won her fame as an author, but I think Laura and her little houses found their most perfect niche, years after her death at 90 in 1957, with homeschooling families.  

The author explained her reason for writing her series, which includes the most familiar title, Little House on the Prairie:

I wanted children now to understand more about the beginnings of things, to know what is behind the things they see - what it was that made America as they know it. I began to think what a wonderful childhood I had. I had seen the whole frontier...I understood that in my own life, I represented a whole period of American history. Then I thought of writing the story of my childhood in several volumes, covering every aspect of the American frontier...

Laura Ingalls Wilder's desire to preserve her pioneering past resulted in a gold mine of good storytelling and sturdy American values in the pages of books she started writing at age 65. She began her books during the Depression and finished at age 76 during World War II. The books received status as children's classics, but are enjoyed by readers of all ages. The appreciation of and use by homeschooling families in recent decades is as much a tribute to Wilder as the literary awards she won. 

The Little House books portray the family unit working to overcome great odds during a ten-year trek across the American heartland. They faced blizzards, droughts, fires, isolation, illness and financial setbacks with equanimity. Security was absolute; Charles and Caroline Ingalls provided a buffer between the harsh frontier and their daughters - Mary, Laura, Carrie and Grace. Life for the Ingalls family centered around home, church and school. When school attendance was impossible because of distance or weather, Caroline Ingalls taught her girls at home. Laura's literary career attests to the effectiveness of this early version of homeschooling. Later, Laura homeschooled her daughter Rose, who also became an author. And Laura's husband, Almanzo Wilder, prepared for farming with hands-on training on his family's upstate New York farm. 

In her book The Long Winter, when Laura complained about blizzards closing the school, Ma Ingalls quickly countered:  "Surely you don't expect to depend on anybody else, Laura...A body can't do that." Independent self-reliance is a theme in each Little House book. So is the love of the American land, which Laura observed on her family's journeys in search of productive farmland. In Little House on the Prairie she writes:

Laura was very happy. The wind sang a low, rustling sound in the grass. Grasshoppers' rasping quivered up from all the immense prairie. A buzzing came from the creek bottoms. But all these sounds made a great warm, happy silence. Laura had never seen a place she liked so much as this place.

Using the Little House books as curriculum for history and literature, or simply for reading enjoyment, transforms readers through 25 years of American history. The Ingalls family's pioneering started just after the Civil War and the series concludes with Laura, Almanzo and Rose Wilder settled on a Missouri farm in 1894. Laura's stories are all true, and they depict homesteading, town building, farming and joys and struggles of a pioneer family in descriptive prose. Time Magazine claims that more Americans learned about the pioneering era through the Wilder books than ever heard of Frederick Jackson Turner's famous thesis on the frontier. When Laura Bush held a 2002 symposium on frontier authors at the White House, she included Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her comments that day indicated her devotion to the Wilder books. 

The influence of the Little House series is worldwide. Since publication, the volumes have been translated into nearly forty languages and dialects. They are considered literary good will ambassadors. Following World War II, the State Department ordered Little House titles translated into German and Japanese to show authentic American values. The books remain immensely popular in Japan even today. 

As a by-product of the Little House publishing success (50 million copies of the books have sold), each of the homeplaces of the Ingalls and Wilder families has been restored. The visiting process started back in the 1940s and 1950s, when readers stopped at Rocky Ridge Farm at Mansfield, Missouri to meet the real Laura. Then six states realized that the Wilder history was worth preserving. The result is a unique network of Little House landmarks, which thousands of families follow yearly. Each Little House site is homeschooling-family-friendly and a wonderful way to enhance reading of the books. Here is a guide to Little House Country, with a summary of the books pertaining to each site. (All Laura Ingalls Wilder books are published by Harper Collins, www.harpercollins.com/littlehouse.)

Little House in the Big Woods was set near Pepin, Wisconsin. A museum in Pepin and the Little House Wayside seven miles from town honor the first of the Wilder books. An annual Laura Ingalls Wilder Day is held each September. Write: Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, Pepin, WI 54759.

Little House on the Prairie is located 17 miles from Independence, Kansas. Replicas of the Ingalls cabin and other period buildings are on the original site. An annual Little House day occurs in June.  See www.littlehouseontheprairie.com.

Farmer Boyis the boyhood story of Almanzo Wilder. The Wilder farm is near Malone, New York and the original house and grounds have been meticulously restored. See www.almanzowilderfarm.com or write: Wilder Association, Box 283, Malone, NY 12953.

On the Banks of Plum Creek took place in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. There the Ingalls family lived in a dugout home, the site of which can still be visited. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum is in town, and an annual pageant is held depicting the pioneering Ingalls family's life on the prairie. See www.walnutgrove.org or write Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, Walnut Grove, MN 56180.

Burr Oak, Iowa was also a home of the Ingalls family during the 1870s, but was not included in the book series. During that time, Pa Ingalls helped manage the local hotel, which is now restored. See www.lauraingallswilder.us or write Laura Ingalls Wilder Park and Museum, Burr Oak, IA 52101.

De Smet, South Dakota was the final home of the Ingalls family, and scene for five of Laura's books. The town is filled with reminders of the author. Two original homes of the Ingalls family have been restored, and 15 other sites can be seen, including the one room schoolhouse attended by Laura Ingalls in the 1880s. A summer pageant portrays the hard but satisfying life of the Ingalls family. See www.lauraingallswildermemorialsociety.com or write Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, De Smet, SD 57231.

Mansfield, Missouri is the final home of Laura and Almanzo Wilder. Their Rocky Ridge Farm has been preserved for visitors. Available for tours is the white farmhouse where the Wilders lived for over fifty years, and a smaller rock cottage where Laura wrote her first four books. A museum contains items familiar from the Little House stories, and personal possessions of the Wilders and their daughter Rose. All three are buried in the local cemetery. See www.lauraingallswilderhome.com or write Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum, Mansfield, MO 65704. 

Steady streams of families make pilgrimages to the Wilder sites, mostly during the summer months. (The sites are open most of the year, so homeschoolers might enjoy planning visits during off-season times.) The reactions to walking in Laura's footsteps are varied. There is excitement over Pa Ingalls' original fiddle, on display at the Wilder home in Mansfield. Children's laughter rings out in Farmer Boy's house, as the guide tells how Almanzo hurled a blacking brush at a bossy sister, but hit the gold wallpaper instead. Happy tears sometime flow as visitors remember a poignant moment from Laura's stories, or their own reading past. And it is hard to resist wading in Plum Creek on a hot day in mid-summer. 

I was one of those children who became fascinated with the pioneer era, and then with history in general, through exposure to the Little House books when I was nine years old. Back then, the book sites were in their infancy, and there was little knowledge available about the historical background of the Wilder writings. I had a question: what happened next? I wanted to know about the later lives of Laura and Almanzo and their siblings. That launched me on a long journey of research. Then I was asked to write my own books, over twenty of them now. It is always a nice compliment to hear that homeschooled children have used my books in their studies of pioneer America. 

I am certain that Laura Ingalls Wilder would be delighted to know that her books are so widely used by homeschoolers. A message she sent to her readers years ago indicates her philosophy and is still good advice:

The Little House books are stories of long ago. Today our way of living and our schools are much different. But the real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.

THE LITTLE HOUSE BOOKS BY LAURA INGALLS WILDER 

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

 All published by Harper Collins

SOME OF WILLIAM ANDERSON'S BOOKS:

 Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography

 Laura's Album

 Laura Ingalls Wilder Country

 A Little House Sampler

 A Little House Reader

 The Little House Guidebook

 All published by Harper Collins

William Anderson is the author of 17 books, including The World of the Trapp Family, Laura Ingalls Wilder Country, and River Boy: The Story of Mark Twain. He is a director of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri and a frequent conference speaker. Visit him on the web at www.williamandersonbooks.com.