On the Banks of Plum Creek audiobook

It's easy to get so stuck on the subject matter of the stories Wilder tells that we fail to notice her brilliant, deceptively quiet writing. Her descriptions of scenery are gorgeous, of course; but I love the tiny sentences that tell so much, like this one when eight-year-old Mary and seven-year-old Laura are confronted by a wild herd of cattle:Mary was too scared to move. Laura was too scared to stand still.Or similarly simple descriptions of the girls waiting for their mother to come home:The house was empty and still, with Ma gone. Ma was so quiet and gentle that she never made any noise, but now the whole house was listening for her.Wilder understood that the impersonal forces of nature are far more frightening than any imagined monsters, because nature doesn't care and so it can't be pleaded with or placated. When it destroys life, it's not being cruel or even indifferent. It simply is. As Laura learns when she thinks she can play safely in the creek after a strong rain:The coldness soaked into her. This was not like wolves or cattle. The creek was not alive. It was only strong and terrible and never stopping. It would pull her down and whirl her away, rolling and tossing her like a willow branch. It would not care.Later, safe at home, Laura reflects:The creek would go down. It would be a gentle, pleasant place to play in again. But nobody could make it do that. Nobody could make it do anything. Laura knew now that there were things stronger than anybody. But the creek had not got her. It had not made her scream and it could not make her cry.I hate it when people think that writing for children is limiting and limited. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote for the entire world, or at least those members of the world who enjoy being captured and held willing prisoner by a story. She just happened to remember that children are an integral part of that group.

This place should be called "Hell Hole", not "Plum Creek". Grasshoppers and blizzards. Another crappy decision by Pa.

I’ve formed a strange and embarrassing new habit as I’ve made my way through this series. I'll give you an example of this habit as demonstrated in my reading of Plum Creek. You see, little Laura has always been too rambunctious to sit still and learn to read. But, when Ma and Pa settle only two and a half miles from town, she and Mary must go to school. Laura finds that she is the only student in the whole school who cannot yet read, and the teacher gives her individual help whenever she has a free moment. Still with me? 

So, in this one sweet scene, “Laura is able to sound out C-A-T… cat!” Suddenly, she remembers [a lesson Pa taught her at home] and says, “P-A-T… pat!” It’s a lightbulb moment, and she goes on to read the entire first line of primer words for her surprised and delighted teacher. And at the close of this triumphant scene, out of my mouth… with the rich, warm timbre of pride and joy, came the words, “Well, that’s great!” Now, this particular phrase is something I’ve never - to my knowledge - said in response to, well... anything. But I’ve been saying it so often, and with zero irony, at the many wholesome achievements the Ingalls family gets under its collective belt in this story. Pa brings home a team of horses for Christmas: “Well, that’s great!” Ma’s vanity cakes are a hit with party guests from town: “Well, that’s great!”The family members experience a devastating crop loss through no fault of their own, and they grieve it, but they also get right back up to try again: “Well…" (you can fill in the blank). Reading this book, I feel akin to my honest-to-goodness 100 year old grandmother, Mary, who’s had every shred of cynicism beaten out of her by long, hard years of living. This woman quite literally has no energy left for listening to bad news, so she only tunes in when there’s a righteous shred of glory at which to rejoice. In summary, this series is turning me into my tired, happy grandma, Mary. And all I can think to say about it is, “Well, that’s great!” (Mary Morgan, at her 100th birthday celebration last April)Book/Song Pairing: O-o-h Child (Nina Simone)

The Ingalls Family versus the WorldLaura and her family drove their covered wagon all the way to Minnesota to begin life anew.Their new house? Built into a bank, with mud walls and a grass roof. A dugout. Ma is not pleased (especially when a cow manages to go through the roof!) but the girls found little ways to be delighted. There's a little creek full of fish and crayfish. There's school - full of new people and learning. And there's family - all together and happy.Except, the crops are ruined . And will stay ruined. Winter is right around the corner and they hardly have anything to eat. Ma, Pa and the girls need money so they can survive. And so, Pa does what he thinks is best and walks 300 miles to find work. Will he be home in time for Christmas? Will he come home at all?As always, the book is beautifully written and stunningly heartfelt. Audiobook CommentsRead by Cherry Jones and accompanied by Paul Woodiel on the fiddle. Love this audio series SO freaking much.YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_reads

This is book #4 in the series. It can be read on its own, but there is much to be gained by knowing what Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and baby Carrie have experienced. For instance, the first book has them in the dense forests of Wisconsin in the last quarter of the 19th century. A lot of their extended family live nearby. In Little House on the Prairie, they leave Wisconsin and journey alone into Missouri and, finally, Kansas. In this volume, having left Kansas for Minnesota, they have traded their horses and wagon for a dugout home and acres of land on the banks of Plum Creek. This is another kind of “wilderness.” Not one with bears roaming the dense forest or with Indians roaming the plains. Pa has (as all pioneers should have) an enormous skill set that allows him to dig wells, trap and skin game, plant crops and build barns and houses. As one season melds into the next we see all these skills being put to use. Ma’s skills are just as important and Mary and Laura are certainly expected to help with caring for the livestock, cleaning and taking care of the baby. Ma is always busy with cooking, preserving, mending, milking, churning, creating clothes and doing Pa’s chores as well when he is away. Yet what comes through so clearly is that they have created a “home” and have a deep sense of “family.” And, most of all, it is a good life despite the snow storms, prairie fires, crop failures and marauding wild animals. Some refer to it as a simpler time, but it is clear that everyone is busy from morning to night and the opportunities for formal education are often too far away to be available. Church going and Sunday school augment the at home bible reading (one of the few books to travel with this family).Our soon-to-be six year old had no trouble understanding that Laura loved her little rag doll (her only doll) and what its loss might mean. She also wanted to discuss how special the opportunity for candy at Christmas was and how one of the children they met was allowed to be “mean” and “selfish.”From an adult’s point of view, the story moves along at a good pace and provides interesting details about what life on the rim of conventional civilization was like; what was important to these people; and, how Pa’s playing the fiddle at night could make a tough day infinitely better.

Listened with the family to the great Cherry Jones read this on cd and it is really (again) so surprisingly good. Listening in the car from Davenport, Iowa back to Chicago to finish it, I can't recall stretches of road (gulp). What I recall is Pa telling his story of snow blindness and falling into a ditch in a blizzard and sleeping in a bearskin coat for a couple days under six feet of snow and then, when the storm clears, seeing he was very close to his Plum Banks home and trudging in. Makes RV camping as a way of engaging with the wilderness look a little tame, let's say.Some great and memorable scenes: the leeches dance, the terrifying swarm of grasshoppers, the incredibly intense blizzard, followed by one of those sweet Wilder Christmases with almost nothing to share but oyster stew and no presents but Pa's guitar music and his blizzard survival story. This is great autobiographical fiction, memoir, really, and a history of 1870's plains life for one (white!) family, a family facing nature as frightening as any Chthulu monster with some grace and music and game-playing and storytelling. A sweet, lyrical and evocative tale worth the name of classic. A great family story for a family to read or listen to. I am serious!

I’m still completely engrossed in this series. For the first time in Laura’s story (not including Farmer Boy since it revolved around Almanzo instead), the show begins to deviate from the books that inspired them. Some of the characters in the book, while still present, differed greatly from their counterparts I have come to know through the show. There was one change I’m incredibly glad that the show made, and that was the substitution of hail for the plague of grasshoppers that hits the Ingalls farm in the book. Those grasshoppers were disturbing and stomach-turning to read about, and I’m incredibly grateful that I didn’t have to see them on the show. However, that plague was morbidly interested to read about, and I couldn’t put the book down because I needed to know what happened and how the family bounced back. While I’ve enjoyed reading about Laura’s life, I’m becoming more and more thankful with every book read that I don’t live during the pioneer age. Their lives were insanely rough, and there was never an end to the hard work required to just continue squeaking by. I’ll take air conditioning and supermarkets over prairie life any day!

I loved the descriptions of life along the creek bank in Minnesota, but now see the privation and days of starvation shining through Laura's eyes. Nellie Oleson is as mean as ever. Continuing to reread the series.This was my favorite volume of the series in my own childhood, and the first that I read and read many times over, and yet I had blocked out that bit about Laura falling in the creek.I am struck by the cultural value in the settler class of not being "beholden", even for a penny pencil, and how a specific set of manners functioned as a social marker of "worthiness". The tale of poor Charlotte the Rag Doll exemplifies this. Would Mr. Nelson have done the life-saving woodchopping for Ma and the girls if Laura had not been made to have good manners? And yet they are living badly on brutally conquered and cleared land - cleared by railroad capitalists using them as a vanguard in a different war of conquest. There is a jumble of threads here leading directly to our present political situation - I am thinking of the ideas in Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzl and how the tangled roots go back to our unexamined origins.As with the other volumes, the series is well worth adult reading.

This was always one of my favorites of the Little House series, perhaps because there is much to correlate with the TV series and its beginning. I loved watching it as a child in the 70's and forward.Cherry Jones continues to do a stellar job in narrating this beloved series of books.

When I was a child, I related to Laura and Mary. Reading these as an adult is a whole new experience. I relate to Ma and Pa, and their fears and struggles. I cried listening to the audiobook this time around. CRIED! Pa and Ma work so hard to establish themselves on the banks of Plum Creek, only to have their wheat field and garden demolished by grasshoppers. Those Norwegians knew what they were talking about when they called the summer "grasshopper weather." The struggle to simply exist and survive seems almost unimaginable compared to the modern luxuries I enjoy every day. I can't believe Pa almost died in a blizzard so close by to home. If I remember correctly from manuscripts, Ma was pregnant during all of this. What must she have been thinking, worrying her husband wasn't coming home? To be a widow with 4 children in those days would have been SO difficult. In all the heartache, there are so many sweet moments too. I love the Town Party, Country Party stories. Nellie Oleson holds a special place amongst my book characters. Although I'm sure my perception of her is greatly influenced by the TV series I also loved as a kid. I love when Laura and Mary explore the Creek, and pick plums, and go to school. I love how they give up Christmas presents and treats to make sure that Pa can buy their Christmas horses. I love how the China shepherdess survives all of their moves across the country, and sits proudly on the mantel. I love how Laura gets a fur muff and cape, even BETTER than Nellie's. This book is full of so much heartache and joy. It made me equally parts happy and sad. I will forever read and re-read this series. I can't wait until my children are old enough to love them too.

I loved reading this book while camping. I wasn't exactly in a prairie, but it was great to read this outside lost in the nature. This book was so sweet and charming, and its simplicity was refreshing after some other heavier books I was reading. I loved following Laura and Mary around their underground house, picking up plums and playing in the creek. I loved feeling happy for them when they made a button garland for Carrie's Christmas, or when they got a new cow. And I could sympathize and feel bad for them when their crop was destroyed by grasshopers, and Pa had to leave for many months to find work. It was such an easy, lovely book to follow and I put it down with a happy sigh of contentment when I finished. Classics like that are not to be missed; there is a special feel to the Little House books that is unique to them, and everyone should experience it.

Even better than the last book 😁