These Happy Golden Years

Laura, not yet sixteen, takes a job teaching school in a drafty shanty twelve miles from home. It's a terrifying job. Most of her pupils are taller than she is—and she has to board with a hateful, crazed lady. Laura is miserable, but she must help to keep her blind sister Mary in school. And every Friday, when the school week is over, Almanzo arrives in his sleigh—come all twelve miles across the desolate icy slough to take her home to her family for the weekend. Could it be love?

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The "Little House" books tell the story of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life. She was born in 1867 in the little log cabin on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin, and through the years she traveled with her family by covered wagon through Kansas, Minnesota, and finally the Dakota Territory, where she met and married Almanzo Wilder.

There was deprivation and hard work. Crops were ruined by storms and grasshopper plagues. But there were also the happy times of love and laughter; sleigh rides, holiday celebrations, and socials. These eight titles now in paperback bring the Ingalls family vividly alive and capture the best of the American pioneer spirit.

The illustrations by Garth Williams are the results of 10 years of research. Mr. Williams actually followed the path of the Ingalls family during the period 1870-1889. No wonder, then, that the pictures have a special quality for the children who have loved these stories through the years.