laura ingalls wilder

so a few weeks ago i was checking out either goodreads or a blog/twitter (i can't remember) and i saw a book that looked intriguing. it was called "the wilder life: my adventures in the lost world of little house on the prairie"by  wendy mcclure and well i kinda have an obsession with laura ingalls wilder and her little house on the prairie books. i've written about it before back in december 2007.

 i can't tell you how many times i've read my copies of her books. i remember when i was probably 8-9 or so getting the first 2-3 books from my aunt for christmas and reading them  and then going to the library to get the other ones and sitting in my basement reading her books in the tent my sister and i made down there. and just absolutely falling in love with them. i loved history back then and i was in my oregon trail days too so the ideas of moving west in a wagon - sign me up! And there were multiple books so i got to see her grow up and get married! (and she got the guy) so of course i loved them. i don't remember when it was i found out she was a real person - i think my mom told me. but i do remember getting her biography at the bookstore and LOVED seeing the pictures and finding out everything about her and seeing what was different from the books. i loved her so much for our 5th grade hero day projects i did laura ingalls wilder as my hero. yup, all the other kids are doing sandra day o'connor, eleanor roosevelt, sally ride, jackie robinson, abe lincoln, and other big historical figures... and i'm doing laura ingalls wilder. i absolutely loved it. i had a nice little presentation, dressed up and it was a fun day in school. i don't have any scanned copies of the pictures, i should look when i'm home....

and well i also had all the other little house books too - the ones written about laura's daughter rose "little house the rocky ridge years" and a few about laura's mother caroline and apparently there are more too on other females in the family that have come out in the last few years. but the original ones are obviously my favorite.

so when i was younger (and still now) i tried to convince my parents we needed to go to south dakota on vacation so i could go to de smet and see where laura grew up and mansfield, missouri where she later lived and wrote the books. and well that never happened. i've always wanted to do a little house on the prairie road trip. in 2010 when i went to visit my friend patricia in kansas and was flying into missouri i looked to see how far mansfield was from kansas city and was disappointed to see it was on the other side of the state. but i always wanted to go there.

so when i see this book and it is a memoir of her going to all the little house on the prairie sites and her reliving her childhood through these books and the recent loss of her mother i was hooked. i need to do this road trip. i want to go to all these random places in wisconsin, minnesota, south dakota, iowa, kansas, missiouri and see for myself where laura lived. (plus i've never been to wi, mn, sd or ia, so 4 more states) so i loved reading this book and it was fun to read about someone else's litte house obsession.

my books just waiting to be read again!
and the biography is the one without a cover

so i haven't read these book in about 10 years probably. and when i went home a few weeks ago i brought a few down to dc with me and i am loving rereading my favorite book series again. and i've done a bit of research and i'm now looking for all of rose's books that she wrote as she was a pretty interesting woman herself and to see some of her perspective on things as well as a few of the other books on laura i don't own.

so i have a goal of doing a laura ingalls wilder road trip and it will happen to make the 10 year old erin extremely happy!

any interesting childhood obsessions that you've recently rediscovered?