Well this has been quite a run for us.

When visiting my parents in March last year, I noticed the blue-boxed collection of Little House on the Prairie books that my mom always had situated on our family library shelves, books that she had probably purchased for my older sister, and that I had always thought were girls’ books. With a daughter and son of my own now, though, I ventured an attempt at reading them aloud…and twelve books later, I’m sure glad we did.

Little Farm in the Ozarks isn’t technically part of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series because the author is obviously different. As I mentioned in my review of Little House on Rocky Ridge, Roger Lea MacBride was a good friend of Rose Wilder Lane, Laura’s daughter and the protagonist of these books. After her death, he inherited the Wilder legacy and so, through former conversations with Rose and perusals of her diaries—not to mention a whole lot of period research—he felt it was time to continue the story where The First Four Years left off. In fact, his first books dramatized the events of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s travel journal, On the Way Home.

That’s a whole lot of text to say that Robert Lea MacBride knows his stuff. Thankfully he’s also a great writer, and the style from one author to the next barely skips a beat. I especially enjoyed the easy flow of the text as I read this one aloud, and I had fun throwing in some Ozark accent on the characters of Swiney and Abe.

My own kids’ favorite part of the book was the final chapters, in which Rose prepares to beat what we assume is the Nellie Oelson on Mansfield, MO, Blanche. The preparation, anticipation, and suspense of those chapters—not to mention the happy ending—made it a very fun and satisfactory read indeed.

From what I gather from GoodReads, Roger Lea MacBride wrote one more installment to the Rocky Ridge Years series, a book titled In the Land of the Big Red Apple. Other writers took up the torch with The Rose Years, completing five more in the series. Because we don’t have the next book on hand, and because we’ve been at this for nine months now, I’m thinking we’re ready for a break, so we’ll shelve these for a later date.

Instead, we’re heading into the mystical land of Narnia with C.S. Lewis and the children. Knowing my 9yo son’s penchant for bad dreams, I think we’ll have to start reading the daytime, at least until he get used to the characters of Narnia. I had at one point worried about this sensitivity, but then I thought…would I really prefer the opposite? No way! If Little House is his speed of content, awesome. Show’s he’s got a tender heart. The further he wants to stay from the shock and violence of modern entertainment the better. I have little Laura Ingalls and Rose Wilder to thank for that.

©2021 E.T. 

Read More from The Little House Series:

• Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1932)
• Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1933)
• Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1935)
• On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1937)
• By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1939)
• The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1940)
• Little Town on the Prairie Laura Ingalls Wilder (1941)
• These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1943)
• On the Way Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1962)
• The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1971)
• Little Farm in the Ozarks by Robert La MacBride (1994)
• Little House on Rocky Ridge by Roger Lea MacBride (1993)
• Confessions of a Prairie B*tch by Alison Arngrim (2010)