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Aug 05, 2011

Hannah rated it:

This was a book clearly destined to be picked up by me, because I too consider myself one of the "Laura" tribe. I loved the LHotP books growing up, and watched the TV show every week. Even today, I still do a re-read at Christmastime of all the Christmas chapters in every book (tin cup, candy stick and a penny anyone?). I try to re-read my favorite: The Long Winter every 2 or 3 years to remind myself that my life isn't so hard after all (and even if it was, my Christmas turkey will More...

11 comments like (14 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2012

kari rated it:

I was curious if this book would be interesting for those, like me, who have never read the Little House books. I attempted them both as a child and as an adult and never was able to make much progress before giving up. Maybe I don't find the romance in a family's continual hardships and dragging young children from place to place over and over. Having close family who grew up poor, with hand-me-down clothes, not enough to eat, getting nothing but an orange for Christmas, complete with using an More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 23, 2011

Sarah rated it:

I love this book! I can so relate to so many of the authors thoughts, especially about relating Little House stories to my "real" life. I have my Little House Colorform set to prove my love. My sis and I were Mary and Laura for Halloween one year.

Unexpectedly, this book makes me very lonely for my mom. She read the series aloud to me as a child and I heard her reread it over the years to my siblings. I didn't commit the date of her death to my memory and I don't think More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 10, 2012

Kelly rated it:

I have mixed feelings about this book. I enjoyed it, but I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't already such a LIW fan? McClure rediscovers Wilder when she is past her childhood. What about those of us who never lost her? I received Little House on the Prairie in 1977 and reread the series every couple of years. I watched the tv show, but saw it as something completely separate from the books. I already knew a lot about the family history and know some of the quoted authors through More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 01, 2011

Laura rated it:

The author claims to be a huge, obsessed Laura Ingalls Wilder (LIW) fan, I claim that I make, too. Because of her claim, I thought that I would really enjoy reading this book. How wrong I was.

In the beginning of the book, the author comes off as rather stupid to me. Her constant shocking revelations about what happened and, more importantly, what didn't happen, were old news and made her seem like a newbie LIW researcher. When she finally got past the "I can't believe it didn't More...

7 comments like (9 people liked it)

Feb 10, 2012

Wendy rated it:

Though I love @halfpintingalls and had a couple of nice virtual interactions with the author while she was working on the book, I put off reading this after some middling reviews from friends and acquaintances. I get how this is not for everyone, and most of the really negative reviews are from people who got the book expecting it to be something else and can't get over that it isn't the book they wanted to read. (Some people think it's for the Little House fanatic; others think it's for those w More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2012

Sarah rated it:

Wendy McClure is obsessed with all things "Little House on the Prairie." Which is fine if you're a 9-year-old girl. What makes this memoir humorous is that Wendy is a young woman, married, and a children's book editor herself. Wendy becomes infatuated with Laura Ingalls Wilder, researching her biographies and memoirs. Determined to find the "Laura Experience," Wendy convinces her husband to take a road trip to visit first-hand all of the homesteads, log cabins and sod hou More...

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Jan 26, 2012

Agatha rated it:

Author, like many of us, was a big fan of the “Little House” books when she was young, and now, as a young adult, she travels to the various sites (the “Big Woods,” “Plum Creek,” etc.) and researches more about the lives of the Ingalls and Wilder families.

I expected to like this book a LOT more than I did. My biggest beef was the lack of organization. It was basically a series of road trips which the author would then use as a starting off point to ramble about all various aspec More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 19, 2012

Jill rated it:

I was clearly not a serious LHOP fan. I read the books a few times and loved them, but somehow I've still never seen the TV show. But I was curious what made a true fan. Wendy's adventures weren't terribly adventurous, but they were entertaining enough. I loved how her boyfriend participated fairly enthusiastically. I remembered enough of the books to connect a bit, but not enough to quite understand the excitement of churning butter and seeing household items that might have belonged to th More...

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Dec 01, 2011

marymurtz rated it:

If you ever read Laura Ingalls Wilder's series of Little House books, you will understand how fascinating it is to read someone's account of researching the books and visiting the sites of the stories.

Wendy McClure breaks down the cultural phenomena of Wilder's stories, and shows us where Laura was bluntly honest and where she embellished, rewriting her own personal history. Rather than diminishing the power of the books, this knowledge made them seem more dear to me.

We More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 18, 2011

jess rated it:

McClure set out to find the world and mythology of Laura Ingalls Wilder's successful novels. She goes to Little House pageants, home sites and museums. She churns butter, twists hay, sleeps in a faux covered wagon while separating fact from fiction and books from tv series. There are sunbonnets, wheat fields and replica log cabins. Along the way, McClure makes some sense of pieces of her own girlhood.

McClure muses over the Homestead Act, through which Indian land was deeded to white More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 19, 2011

Shannon rated it:

Full disclosure: I didn't finish this book. I listened to it as an audio book (more on that in a minute) so I can't say what page I got to but I can say it's when the author visits her first LIW site in Pepin, WI. I'd been growing irritated, both with the author and with the reader, and this just kind of did it for me. McClure finds, as she visits a replica of Laura's cabin in the Big Woods, a letter that was written by Laura to a group of school kids. In it, Laura says something along the l More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Oct 15, 2011

Relyn rated it:

I was delighted to discover this book. A girl who loves Laura is a girl after my own heart. I was hooked when I read this,

"...well, you know what I really liked? I liked books with pictures of toast in them. Well, not just toast, you know, cups and ladles and baskets and hats, lovingly rendered in all their places in a room or even just little vignettes, but at any rate things in all their thinginess.

I pored over pages of Richard Scarry's Dictionary of Something-Or-Other, l

More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Oct 08, 2011

Djinnjer rated it:

Normally, I end up rounding up on bookclub books because of the interesting conversations I associate with them. This time, I am standing firm at "okay."

I did not read all the Little House books. I think I read three before I hit Farmer Boy, couldn't get through it, and refused to skip ahead in my box set (which was weird, because wee! me used to read series out of order all the time). So I was coming to this book as a non-Wilder fan, but I was more than half-expecting t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 08, 2011

Sam rated it:

I'll confess - I've never read the "Little House" books. How then, did I end up reading this book about their author? While I've not read the books, I've known people my entire life who were shaped by them, and heard about them constantly. People have the same fantasies about showing Laura the wonders of the modern world, and wanting to cook things that Ma made in the stories.

I was also fascinated by a series of books that seemed to blur the line between non-fiction and fic More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 08, 2011

CJ rated it:

I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books when I was a young girl. I read them over and over and over. I think they have informed and shaped my life since that time. The first thing I thought when a friend told me about this book was, "Damn! I should have written that book!!" It never occurred to me to take a Laura pilgrimage (I'm thinking about it now).

McClure's adventure took her from place to place in the Laura timeline and had her trying things like creating her own sourdoug More...

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Sep 14, 2011

Renee added it

For anyone who has ever loved the Little House books.

As a kid I adored the series, and that love has held up in adulthood. To this day, I can't quite articulate the relationship I have with these books. As much as I wanted it to be a singular experience, it was heartwarming to read about their impact on others.

I have long wanted to visit Mansfield, Missouri and DeSmet, South Dakota. But now, maybe I think that I don't have to see these places, and it perhaps would be be More...

0 comments like

Sep 12, 2011

Colleen rated it:

For me, there was a problem of expectation. Everything I'd read about this book talked about Wendy McClure's HI-larious experiences doing the things Laura and her family did in the Little House books. Yes, she grinds wheat to make bread and, yes, she buys a butter churn on ebay and makes butter. At one of the home sites, she half-heartedly twists ONE haystick. That's it folks! It's actually more of a travelogue as Wendy and her saint of a boyfriend (he puts up with a lot of crazy!) and various o More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 07, 2011

Jacqueline rated it:

My daughter is a true Little House fan. She grew up reading the books, had her own Little House club, and spent most of her 8th year in a prairie dress of some kind. So, when we saw this book she wanted to read it immediately. Unfortunately for her she just started school for the fall and adding another book to her reading list wasn't going to happen. So, I read it.

I am also a Wilder fan - who do you think got our daughter hooked on the Prairie books in the first place. My brother, for More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2011

Trish rated it:

I must admit that I, like Wendy, fell in love with Laura Ingalls and her adventures as a young girl. I have read the entire series of Little House books more times than I can count, as well as many related books. Although I am aware that they are not autobiographical, but were rather written to give future generations a sense of what it was like then, I have never pursued that line of thought very far. I simply enjoy being taken away to another time and place.

It was with a bit of trepi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 22, 2011

Sario rated it:

A book about books that I loved as a child is destined to be a winner for me! Wendy McClure seemed to have enjoyed the Little House books as much as I did, even going so far as to read Laura's other unpopular journals (On the Way Home and West From Home). As an adult, revisiting the appeal of these books and searching for the Real Laura Experience, Wendy dives deep into Little House culture. She visits all the homesteads, discovers the 70's Japanese Anime Little House series (Laura, the Prairie More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 13, 2011

Lisa rated it:

I had high expectations for this book, a tale of a woman's obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder. I first read the "Little House" book series in elementary school, and re-read them several times over the years including aloud to my children. So I totally understood how someone would be really enamored of the Ingalls clan and the pioneer life. I, too, wanted to churn butter and have a corn cob doll.
Reading this book, however, reminded me a bit of the book "Sweater Quest: My Yea More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 07, 2011

Kathleen rated it:

Where did I read about this book? Not the NY Times. Of course, I had read all of the Little House on the Prairie books when I was young. Who didn't want to be Laura and live with Ma and Pa. I must have watched some of the Michael Landon TV series (10 years), but no strong memories. Before reading this book, I did not know there were Laura groupies and actually historical sites where Laura and her family lived. The author, Wendy McClure is delightful and her supportive boyfriend (who read a More...

0 comments like

Aug 01, 2011

Sarah rated it:

I was a bit reluctant to read this book, mostly because I was angry not to be the one to write it. But once I picked it up I couldn't put it down, largely because the author brought me quickly and irretrievably back to what she calls "Laura World." Wendi McClure's Laura World is different from mine, but while she gave me a good clear glimpse into her version, she also allowed me to revisit my own.

Like most superfans, I have conflicting desires: to be the sole resident of my More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 01, 2011

Lisa rated it:

I started this in the wake of a discussion with a friend on her child's reading of the Little House books and coming up against some of the less pleasant aspects of the stories, like Ma's and other characters' racism. This book touches on some of those elements as well, but is mostly a very humorous look at one woman's obsession with the Little House series (the books, NOT the TV series, although that is inevitably touched on as well). Wendy McClure loved and lived the books growing up, not want More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 27, 2011

Deborah rated it:

I read an excerpt of this book online a few months ago where the author talked about how after reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series dozens of times growing up, she would pretend that Laura was really there in modern times with her and that she would show her around modern marvels like soda and chocolate. I knew then that I had to read this book.

I love books that discuss re-reading children's books, something I did when I was young, and something I still do now so I lov More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 22, 2011

Alex rated it:

As someone who has books that she has LOVED and wanted to live in, I was certainly game to take on McClure’s memoir of re-entering the Little House on the Prairie books she loved as a child as an adult. I felt that the book had a shaky start. I feel McClure was unsuccessful at describing to her reader exactly what it is about the books that makes her so, er, wild for them. If I hadn’t had the experience of LOVING certain books myself, I might have just considered her a bit odd and not really wa More...

0 comments like

Jun 18, 2011

Caitlin added it

I could see Laura Ingalls WIlder everywhere. Really she was everywhere. She was no longer just a person but a universe made of hundreds of little bits, a historical fictional literary figure character person idea grandma-girl-thing.

My only encounters with Little House on the Prairie are the reruns I occasionally watch, this website (Psyched on the Prairie, I'm too lazy to re-embed it right now), which is excellent, and reading the awesome Confessions of a Prairie Bitch. Sadly, More...

0 comments like

Jun 18, 2011

Bridget rated it:

The thing about a book like this - a book about a journey through some topic or other where the author's presence is overt - is that the author has to be likeable. Otherwise, it's like being stuck with a tour guide whose voice is kind of annoying and half the things she says aren't interesting and maybe she's a low-talker sometimes and at the end of the tour you're just glad to be DONE.

Unfortunately, that's how this book was for me. From almost the very beginning, it was the weirdest More...

2 comments like (10 people liked it)

Jun 16, 2011

Coffeeboss rated it:

This is a book that a friend of mine and I wanted to write 10 years ago. Seriously, we had the EXACT same idea! But we were lazy slackers with no time, drive, or money. ;-) Instead, we get Wendy McClure's account of her Little House on the Prairie obsession taking her to all the actual historic sites of the Ingalls and Wilder families, as well as (in some cases) the crazy touristy hoopla surrounding these sites today. McClure even earnestly finds an antique butter churn on Ebay to try churning More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)