Little House on the Prairie (novel)

Little House on the Prairie

Front dustjacket with Sewell illustration
Author	Laura Ingalls Wilder
Illustrator	Helen Sewell Garth Williams (1953)
Country	United States
Series	Little House
Genre	Children's novel Family saga Western
Publisher	Harper & Brothers
Publication date	September 19, 1935
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	200; 334 pp.
OCLC	18319291
LC Class	PZ7.W6461 Lit 1971
Preceded by	Farmer Boy
Followed by	On the Banks of Plum Creek

Little House on the Prairie is an autobiographical children's novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in 1935. It was the third-published book in the Little House series but its story continues that of the first book, Little House in the Big Woods (1932), and is not related to the second. Thus it is sometimes called the second book in the series, or the second volume of "the Laura Years".

The book is about the months the Ingalls family spent on the Kansas prairie around the town of Independence. Wilder describes how her father built their one-room log house in Indian Territory, having heard that the government planned to open the territory to white settlers soon.

In contrast to Little House in the Big Woods, the Ingalls family faces difficulty and danger in this sequel. They all fall ill from malaria, which was ascribed to breathing the night air or eating watermelon. American Indians are a common sight for the little family, as their house was built in Osage territory, and Ma's open prejudice about Indians contrasts with Laura's more childlike observations about the Indians who live and ride nearby. The Indians begin to congregate at the nearby river bottoms and their war cries unnerve the settlers, who worry they may be attacked, but an Osage chief who was friendly with Pa is ultimately able to avert the hostilities.

By the end of the book, all the family's work is undone when word comes that U.S. soldiers are being sent to remove white settlers from Indian Territory. Pa decides to move the family away immediately before they can be forced to leave.

The Ingalls family moved from the Big Woods of Wisconsin to Kansas in 1868 (stopping for a while in Rothville, Missouri), and lived there between 1869 and 1870. Baby Carrie was born there in August, and a few weeks after her birth, they were forced to leave the territory (however, in the novel, Carrie is present during the move to Kansas). The Ingalls family moved back to Wisconsin, where they lived the next four years. In 1874 they started for Walnut Grove, Minnesota, stopping for a while in Lake City, Minnesota.