I love the evenings when I arrive home to find a box from Amazon.com waiting for me. Tonight's self gift was a book, The Wilder Life, My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure. A shout out to Emily who told me about this new book. I was going to wait until it came out in paperback, but really, why should I do that?
I'm having a wonderful time with this book! The author and I have so much in common! Our childhood ideas of our personal friendship with Laura. Thinking that we alone loved Laura as much as we did. The desire to just slide into her world to experience the life that she lived. We were both true to the books and put absolutely no stock in the TV show. We all know that Pa didn't look anything like Michael Landon and most of what happened on the show never happened at all.
Wendy tells me about remembering the path through her school to where the books were on the library shelves. Same map, different school. But the school names are even similar! She went to Oak Park Elementary and I went to Park Lawn Elementary. We could merge our schools into Oak Park Lawn Elementary! She grew up in Oak Park, IL and I was born there. She lived in the same house her entire childhood. After we left Oak Park I lived on the same street for 16 years.
I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book and then lending it out to Twila, a friend who may be even more of a calico-waving freak flag flyer than I am. To all you Laura Ingalls Wilder fans out there, take off your corset, sit in your comfortable chair near the window and have yourselves a good read.
Cheers!
I met Wendy at last year's LauraPalooza and was so anxious to read her book! I loved it...and isn't the cover beautiful?
ReplyDeleteI see that you left comments on Beyond Little House. It's a great go-to place for all things Laura Ingalls Wilder, isn't it? :-)