Laura Ingalls Wilder

I read a wonderful story about Laura Ingalls Wilder in an old copy of Ideals magazine. I loved her books and of course the tv series, Little House on the Prairie. I will give you one of the paragraphs from this article.

Late in life Wilder wrote a letter about how much the world had changed since her childhood. But she saw some things as constants. Her words describe in perfect simplicity the philosophy that lay behind each and every one of her books: "The real things haven't changed," she wrote. "It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with the simple pleasures and to be cheerful and to have courage when things go wrong." These plain and truthful words embody the spirit of Wilder's writing, certainly, but they are testaments to something far greater--the spirit of the American pioneer. Wilder's philosophy, after all, was not unique or of her own invention. What makes her books so very compelling is not that they are the story of one family, but that they tell the story of countless nameless, faceless pioneer families who lived and died without notice, but whose courage and perseverance opened the American West and shaped our nation.