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JK's avatar

I went through such a big Little House period. But more than anything the food stuck with me, to the point that I no longer have any of the books, but I still have the Little House cookbook. I worry about how i would feel if I re-read the series and had to reckon with just how bad it is.

I am also curious about how the tv show has warped the way people view the story.

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ElizabethMontgomeryCliftHoney's avatar

I read all these books with my dad growing up. (I suspect he censored some of the overt racism, because his method was either to read it as is and have a discussion afterward or to skip over parts and I don't remember having discussions about these books as we did about Tom Sawyer and Pippi Longstocking when she went to the South Pacific and some others, which I remember vividly.) Weirdly, I don't remember The Long Winter at all. The ones I remember best are Big Woods, Plum Creek and Farmer Boy and I suspect that's because what I liked about these stories were the procedural elements. The actual narrative of the stories is hazy, but I have vivid memories of how to tap a tree to make maple syrup and turn a bladder into a balloon and how to braid hair and bake various cakes and breads and how to trap different animals. From about ages five to 10 I was obsessed with survival stories, My Side of the Mountain and Hatchet and the like. And then in sixth grade I was sick of them and never looked back. I suspect it's because my family was pretty poor when I was really little and I always felt anxiety about losing everything. My parents got the jobs they kept until retirement when I was 10 (dad) and 11 (mom) and I think that when that sense of precarity disappeared, my interest in survival fiction went with it.

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