Monday 3 February 2020

LAURA INGALLS WILDER - February's Author by Sharon Tregenza


LAURA INGALLS WILDER





Laura Ingalls was born on February 7th, 1867 near Pepin, Wisconsin in the US. She was the daughter of Charles and Caroline Ingalls and had three sisters - a brother, Charles Frederic died less than a year after he was born.



Laura with two of her sisters.


Laura received her teaching certificate at age 15 and taught for several years. When she was 18 she married Almanzo Wilder and they had a daughter, Rose in 1886.

After several moves, in 1894 the family moved to Rocky Ridge Farm near Mansfield, Missouri and this is where Laura wrote the Little House Books. Her daughter Rose had grown up to be a writer and convinced her mother to write the stories based on her life as a pioneer. 



On Rocky Ridge Farm



The first was published in 1932 when Laura was 65 years old.





Laura died at Rocky Ridge Farm in 1957, three days after her 90th birthday.


Five facts about Laura Ingalls Wilder:

1. She was related to one of the Salem 'witches'.

2. As a child, she survived a cloud of 3.5 trillion locusts.

3. Wilder claimed that 'every story' in her books was true, which wasn't, in fact, true.

4. She didn't own a television so never saw the widely popular 'Little House on the Prairie' which had millions of viewers all over the world.

5. In honour of her 150th birthday a life size model of her was sculpted out of butter.








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6 comments:

Abbeybufo said...

I believe the award that once bore her name has now been redesignated, as her depiction of Native Americans is problematic.

Sharon Tregenza said...

Ooh, I didn't know that. Thank you for pointing it out. Unfortunately, it's too late for me to delete that from the blog. I feel bad now. :(

Penny Dolan said...

Thanks for contacting me, Sharon. That line has now been deleted.
Please do not feel bad. Your author posts are always interesting.

Thank you for alerting us to the error, Abbeybufo. Your help is much appreciated.

Sharon Tregenza said...

Thank you for that, Penny. x

Abbeybufo said...

Sorry to cause an upset - here is a link to the American LA's decision https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/books/laura-ingalls-wilder-book-award.html

LuWrites said...

Whatever the current problems over her work, as historical and highly readable accounts, the books are unique and quite extraordinary. You can't wipe out the past. In many ways, seeing the First Nation people the way she saw them shows us clearly how appalling the attitudes and behaviour of the first pioneers was - and actually how much better Native Americans lived in their land than the settlers did. Thanks for sharing Sharon.