As the second of five children born to Charles and Caroline Quiner Ingalls, it comes as no surprise that Laura's semi-autobiographical stories celebrate the value of strong family ties and having a traditional home and hearth. These themes resonate throughout her books as she shares the chronicles of her everyday chores and interactions with friends, all the while developing into a young woman who "possesses the spirit of the frontier" (New World Encyclopedia, 2008). The Ingalls family left Pepin when Laura and her older sister Mary were quite young in order to settle on the"Indian Territory" in what is now Independence, Kansas. It was here where Laura received the inspiration for her Little House on the Prairie book. The Ingalls ended up moving back to Pepin after the birth of Laura's younger sister, Carrie; they stayed there for a couple of years before Laura's father wanted to take advantage of the preemptive lands in Walnut Grove and Burr Oak, Minnesota. After the family lived between these places for several years, they traveled to the Dakota Territory near the city of De Smet, where they settled permanently. During this elapsed time, Laura's mother gave birth to two more children, Freddie (who passed away in infancy) and Grace Pearl. Once the family settled in De Smet, Laura was able to attend school regularly (though she never completed high school) and she was also able to contribute to her family by working part time jobs as a seamstress and, eventually, as a teacher. During this time, Laura made friends and also met her future husband, Almanzo Wilder. They were married in 1885 when Laura was eighteen. However, this meant that she had to give up her teaching career because married women were not permitted to teach. The couple had two children, Rose Wilder Lane, and an unnamed boy who passed away soon after he was born. The Wilders settled in various places, from Minnesota, to Florida, to De Smet (in the Dakota Territory), and finally to Missouri, where they built a permanent dwelling that later became known as Rocky Ridge Farm.
While Laura's collection of Little House books were ultimately inspired by her own experiences, her daughter, Rose, was one of her main inspirations for recording them. Rose loved to hear about her mother's experiences on the frontier and was an aspiring writer herself, so Laura took the time to share her memories and record them in an effort to preserve the history of her childhood. In 1911, her first article was published in the "Missouri Ruralist" and she continued to write other farming articles while she also worked on her beloved "Little House" books, the first of which (Little House in the Big Woods) was published in 1932. Though Laura was sixty-five years old at the time that her first book was published, she went on to write another seven books that chronicled her life and experiences on the frontier. They were highly acclaimed and four of them received Newbery Honor Awards. These wonderful books also were adapted into the television show "Little House on the Prairie", which aired from 1974-1982. Because of her meaningful contribution to children's literature, The Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal was created in 1954 in her honor and is now given out once every two years to an author or illustrator whose work exemplifies the characteristics of outstanding literature for children.
Laura passed away in February of 1957, at the age of ninety. Through her books, she provided a link to the past, which she is able to contrast to her experiences later on in life. For example, she shared that "it has been many years since [she has] beaten eggs with a fork, or cleaned a kerosene lamp; many things have made living and learning easier" (GoodReads, Laura Ingalls Wilder Quotes). I think that Laura's story has been upheld in the hearts of so many because she understood that though her world was evolving from a frontier lifestyle into an industrially-based society, "the real things [like being honest, making the most of what we have, being happy with simple pleasures, and having courage when things go wrong] haven't changed" (GoodReads, Laura Ingalls Wilder Quotes). Her optimistic outlook on life and her perseverance throughout the uncertain changes in her life make her an identifiable and endearing character in the "Little House" books and an inspiration to readers both young and old. Her stories provide us with a credible source of American history of life on the frontier, but to Laura, they are simply the experiences of her youth, written for her own satisfaction, and now shared with the world. Little did she know that her personal history would have such a wide-ranging impact on children's literature as her audiences connected with and grew up alongside the character of Laura Ingalls.
