Right now, Alex and I are reading Little House on the Prairie. I haven’t read it since I was a kid myself, and I’m surprised by the depth in it. They are children’s books—yet Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t just write down her memories for children’s entertainment. Little House on the Prairie is a lesson in political history.
Big Woods was just a portrait of a year in frontier America, with no particular underlying plot. By contrast, Prairie is about the expansion into Indian territory, and although it’s told from a child’s point of view, all the adult angst and prejudice is there—the way that whites viewed the land as theirs to take. Even Charles Ingalls, who is indisputably a good guy, and far more open-minded than any other character in the book, believed himself to be entirely justified in settling in Indian territory. And the comments made by Caroline Ingalls are nothing short of racist.
All this Wilder puts in her book, using little Laura as a foil. Laura spends the whole book asking when she’s going to get to see a “papoose.” She’s scared of the Indians, but fascinated, too, and she shows a frank sympathy for them.
“Yes,” Pa said. “When white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on. … That’s why we’re here, Laura. White people are going to settle all this country, and we get the best land because we get here first and take our pick. Now do you understand?”
“Yes, Pa,” Laura said. “But Pa, I thought this was Indian Territory. Won’t it make the Indians mad to have to—“
“No more questions, Laura,” Pa said, firmly.
Christian walked in as we read this passage two nights ago, and his eyebrows hit the ceiling. “Hm,” was his only comment.
The themes are deliberate, woven into the fabric of the story. Because Wilder wrote for children, she presented them without adding commentary, without overtly explaining her views. But the prevalence of the theme—Laura’s fascination with the natives, contrasted with the adults’ varying degrees of bigotry—tells me that she recognized her parents’ weaknesses, and wanted to point out the essential wrongness of what was going on. Quite sophisticated, for a children’s book. It’s very well done. I can’t wait to finish the series.
Kathleen M. Basi 
I thought about doing this one with my 4-year-old as well. But my question is, do you say anything to Alex about the racism? Does he ask about it? I guess my fear is that my son will think this is somehow ok or even go as far as “re-enacting” parts of it, as he has been known to do with stories before. I’m not sure whether to just kind of ignore it and go on reading the story or if I should use it as a teaching moment. Or is racism just too much for a 4-year-old to handle?
Hmmm. Good question. I’m not really talking about the racism right now, because I think if I start trying to explain it, it will become one of those holes that you keep digging deeper as you try to fill it.
I interacted with almost no one who wasn’t white, when I was a kid. And even though my teachers *taught* us that racism was wrong (i.e., everyone is the same in God’s eyes, treat people the same regardless of their skin color), the sheer harping on it made me so race conscious that I spend my whole life afraid of acting racist. I wish they’d just let me be color blind.
For now, Alex is color blind, and I’m trying to keep it that way as long as I can.
Great Thoughts! I haven’t read her books to William yet, but some of the books I do read I wonder some of the same things. We are working on James and The Giant Peach right now. How do you explain the nasty Aunts….
I haven’t read that one. I know they made a movie but that was in my pre-parenting days so it never made it onto my radar. Have to check it out.
Try reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to a six-year-old. I don’t think he even meant to sound racist, it was just the way things were.
That’s adventurous. I read Tom Sawyer about two years ago for the first time. 🙂 Actually, that one wasn’t so bad. Huck Finn was a hard read. Too much dialect.