LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS,
By Laura Ingalls Wilder
This selection is read by retired farmer Gert Lepine. Gert and her sisters, Jeannette and Therese, and, until she was 92, her mother Imelda, ran their dairy farm in Mud City, Vermont, for over 40 years.

Little House in the Big Woods is a classic of American pioneer life. The little girl Laura Ingalls recalls what it was like to live in the Big Woods of Wisconsin in the 1880s. Around her family in their log cabin is looming forest, but from it her father makes a living as a hunter and fur trader. Listen to Laura’s stories carefully. They are told with candor and faithfulness to her own experience. Early memories are often very strong ones. After all, life as a child in those days depended on resourceful parents who knew how to build and farm, hunt and cook from scratch, and, not least, to make their own fun.

THINGS TO DO ONLINE

Quick quiz

1. How did Pepin, the town where Laura’s family goes for supplies, get its name?

a) It was named after the owner of the general store
b) It was named after a native animal
c) It was named after a French king
d) It was named after the kind of peaches that grow in this part of Wisconsin.

To find out, follow this link.

A lot of the fur trappers in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Canada and Vermont were French. Lake Pepin was also known as the Lake of Tears. It is said that that name came from the sadness the local Indians, the Sioux, felt at the coming of the white man.

Laura, who speaks English, pronounced the name “pep-in.” But the French who named it pronounced it “pay-panh,” which means “kernel” or “pit.” Around Pepin were les bois grands. To translate that, go to this site, type in the phrase “bois grands” and choose “French to English” from the list of language choices.

2. Which of the following trees did NOT grow in the Big Woods?

a) Maple
b) Oak
c) Basswood
d) Cedar
e) Elm

Look for the answer at this introductory site to the Big Woods.

The American Elm used to be a tree common to small towns and villages. Here’s a close up look at an elm. But the skeletons alone are still to be seen in Vermont, after Dutch Elm Disease ran rampant in the middle of the 20th century, killing most examples.

Find the synonym
Americans have words for lots of things, for example “sugar-on-snow,” which was a treat for Laura, is called by other names in, say, Massachusetts. To find out what they call it, and how to make it, check in here .

Funny names
Do you know what the name of the town you live in came from? You can be the first in your family to know. To find the origin of the name, use a search engine like Yahoo or Google. Type in the name of your town plus “name” plus “means.” Your search query will look like this: Winooski +name +means. Oh, Winooski was named by the Abenaki Indians and means “wild onion.”

MORE THINGS TO DO

Read this book…
When Laura Ingalls grew up she became a teacher and married Almanzo Wilder. Her book Farmer Boy, based on her husband’s account of his boyhood, shows us what it was like to grow up in upper New York State in the 1860s, a much, more settled existence than her own experience.

Do it yourself
Here’s a site with lots of activities you can do with your parents or an older brother or sister.
Mother Earth News tells you how to make maple syrup without having a “sugarbush” .

Illustrations, please
Your drawings to illustrate the Big Woods story are welcome. All you have to do is find someone with a scanner—perhaps at your school, or if not at home at a friend’s house. Scan the illustration in, creating what’s called a .jpg file or a .gif file, then send it attached to a message to us in the Contact Us section of our website. Be sure to attach your name, age and the name of the town you live in, plus your email address.

Hot stuff

Jeannette Lepine, our guest-reader Gert Lepine’s sister, passed on to Camel’s Hump Cooks her family recipe for Blueberry Bread.

Note: The "Things to do" sections can often use an adult's help or encouragement.



FROM THE CHR LIBRARIAN

Short bio and books about Wilder
The Little House series takes off from the book read on Camel’s Hump Radio, published in 1932, when Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65. In fact, because of her family’s many migrations, this is the only book in the series that took place in the Big Woods.

Here’s a short sketch of the Ingalls’ migrations, not unusual for Americans at the time: The family left the Big Woods for Dakota Territory to homestead and, having mistakenly settled on Indian land, the family moved again to Minnesota, "on the banks of Plum Creek." Laura chronicled this move in a later book. In the mid-1870s they became innkeepers in Iowa, but then traveled back to Dakota Territory where they again homesteaded. Near the town of De Smet, Laura Ingalls taught school and in 1885 married Almanzo Wilder. In l894 due to poor weather and financial conditions, the Wilders with daughter Rose made a six-month wagon journey to Mansfield, Missouri.

Wilder wanted children to learn about America's heritage--frontier life, homesteading, the coming of the railroads--as she had experienced it as a child. Even though the country had changed considerably since her youth, Wilder believed that the frontier values of honesty, truth and courage remained.

Related books
Picture books based on Wilder’s stories about Laura are available for younger children. Most are based on chapters from the original books.

If you’re interested in real-life history…
On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894 is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s personal record of one of her childhood migrations.

Did you know…?
In real life, Laura’s sister Mary became blind.

Note: In the “Things to do” sections, there are projects for you and your family that will give them more of the flavor of 19th century life