These Happy Golden Years: A Newbery Honor Award Winner (Little House, 8)

Listened to CDs while on the train eastbound, and then in our rental car as my ten-year-old granddaughter and I approached Walnut Grove, Minnesota and DeSmet, South Dakota on our "Laura Ingalls Wilder" journey during their Pageant weeks, and while engaging in historic sites. We had re-read all nine books in preparation for our travels, but the CDs, beautifully read by Cherry Jones, were not only a reminder, but added different interpretations, and joy.

This is my favorite Little House book. They are all so happy and finally their lives seem to be more carefree and life seems to be going their way. I also really love Almanzo and Laura's courtship.

Hearing the Little House stories in audio bring them to life. I noticed things in the stories I didn't catch by just reading them. I can listen to them anywhere now.

This book is mainly concerned with the courtship and marriage of Almanzo Wilder and Laura Ingalls. The town of DeSmet has boomed and grown and slowed down by this time and life has found comfortable rhythms. Pa is a prosperous farmer and townsman, Laura is a teacher, and Almanzo is a respected businessman who also farms a holding on the town's edge. One can tell this novel meant a lot personally to Laura and that she enjoyed re-visiting these "happy, golden years" in her own life and sharing them with us. One of the three or four best of all the Little House novels.

This book, which was a 1944 Newbery Honor Book (that is, a runner-up to the Medal winner), continues the autobiography of Mrs. Wilders (1867-1957) through the years 1883 to 1885 when the author was 15 to 18 years old. It begins immediately after the events described in "Little Town on the Prairie"; she immediately begins her career as a school teacher in a very small schoolhouse about twelve miles to the south of De Smet, South Dakota (although South Dakota doesn't become a state until 1889). Through experimentation, practice, and management, she becomes a good school teacher and is able to keep up with her own studies. And, at the same time, earn enough money to help keep her sister Mary in a college for the blind in Iowa. Almanzo Wilder (1857-1949) continues to court her and drives her home each weekend in a horse-drawn sleigh. As time goes by their friendship turns to love and they are married and Laura goes off to Almanzo's homestead to have her own little house on the prairie. Throughout the book, the author continues to include details of frontier/homesteader life that brings that part of our history to life and shows how people worked hard to overcome difficulties, never giving up. In my opinion, this is the best written of all of the books in the series. It also shows the love that Laura and Almanzo truly had for each other.