Wilderness

The "Little House" books were written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and set in the wilderness.  So that's what I'll write about.

I really like the "Little House" books.  I read the first three when I was young, and the rest decades later.  They're children's fiction based on Wilder's actual family, who moved around the American frontier before settling down in South Dakota.

There's some controversy about the book.  Wilder's daughter Rose Wilder Lane, who wrote some novels of her own, served as her editor, and some people wonder how much of the books are her work.  Her daughter was an early libertarian, and it's been suggested that her story is told through the prism of the daughter's anti-government sentiments.  One example is the part in the books where the family sells a cow and makes economies to pay for her blind sister to attend a school for the vision-impaired.  In real life, the territorial government picked up the tab!  But maybe the change was just to make it a better story...

Michael Landon's TV show, on the other hand, I've always found quite shameless, cheesy and manipulative. (Notice how clean their clothes were!)

There's a spinoff book series focusing on Rose, after Laura, husband and daughter moved to a new farm in the Ozarks.  I ought to read those books too.