Little House in the Big Woods

Summary

Little House in the Big Woods follows one year in the life of a pioneer family in a log house in the forests of Wisconsin, seen through the eyes of Laura, who is about five. She lives with Pa, who hunts, traps and farms; Ma, who keeps the house; her older sister Mary; baby Carrie; and Jack, the brindle bulldog. The nearest town, Pepin, is seven miles away, and wolves and bears live in the woods all around. The book opens in autumn as the family lays in food for winter: Pa smokes venison in a hollowed tree trunk, and when Uncle Henry helps butcher the hog, Laura and Mary play with the blown-up bladder and roast the pig's tail. Through the winter Ma follows her weekly round of washing, ironing, mending, churning, cleaning and baking, colors the butter with carrot juice and presses it in a strawberry mold. In the evenings Pa makes bullets, cleans his rifle, plays his fiddle and tells stories: Grandpa chased home by a screaming panther, and Pa as a boy who dawdled instead of fetching the cows and fled from a voice in the dark that turned out to be a screech-owl. At Christmas Aunt Eliza, Uncle Peter and the cousins visit, Uncle Peter tells how his dog Prince kept Aunt Eliza from a spring where a panther waited, and Laura gets a rag doll she names Charlotte. On Sundays Laura has to sit still, and when she cries out that she hates Sunday, Pa tells how Grandpa and his brothers were caught sledding on the Sabbath when a pig jumped onto their sled. In spring Pa walks to town to trade his furs and, coming home in the dark, beats a stump he takes for a bear, while at home Ma has slapped a real bear in the barnyard thinking it was the cow. The family goes to Grandpa's for the sugaring and the dance, where Grandma outlasts Uncle George in a jig and hot syrup is poured on snow for candy. Laura sees her first town and the shore of Lake Pepin. Summer brings a visit to the Swedish neighbor Mrs. Peterson, cheese-making, a bee tree, and a whipping after Laura slaps Mary for boasting that golden hair is prettier than brown. At harvest, cousin Charley shouts for help as a joke until he truly steps on a yellow jackets' nest. The threshing machine comes, and in the last chapter Pa, waiting at the deer lick, finds the animals too beautiful to shoot. The book ends by the fire as Pa plays Auld Lang Syne and Laura decides that now can never be a long time ago. Harper and Brothers published the book in 1932 with drawings by Helen Sewell. It was Wilder's first book, and Garth Williams's illustrations replaced Sewell's in the uniform edition of 1953.

Top Lessons

• Work done together makes a home

  Every season in the Big Woods has its work: smoking meat, churning, sugaring, cheese-making and harvest. Even small children help, and the work is shown as part of family love rather than a burden.

• Obedience keeps us safe

  Pa's story about the voice in the woods and Charley's false cries for help both show that disobeying or playing tricks can lead to real danger. When Charley truly needs help, no one believes he is in trouble until they see him.

• Fear and courage in the dark

  Ma stays calm when she finds a bear in the barnyard and gets Laura safely inside, and Pa decides to face what he thinks is a bear on the road home. The chapter shows both real danger and the fears that darkness makes bigger than they are.

• Kindness and jealousy between sisters

  Laura and Mary share their cookies with baby Carrie, but Laura also slaps Mary when Mary boasts about her golden hair. The book shows that sisters can love each other and still be tempted to jealousy, and that wrongs are corrected and forgiven in the family.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The book is not about illness, but it records frontier home care with documentary plainness. When Charley is badly stung by yellow jackets in the Harvest chapter, Ma and Aunt Polly plaster him with mud, wrap him in sheets and give him herb tea for his fever; no doctor is sent for, and seven miles to town makes home remedy the only care at hand. Laura and Mary burn their fingers on Pa's new-cast bullets. The family's careful laying-in of meat, butter, cheese and vegetables for winter also reflects how near the frontier lived to want, though no one goes hungry in this book.

• Chapter 11, "Harvest"

  Charley, stung all over by yellow jackets, is packed in mud and sheets and given herb tea for his fever by Ma and Aunt Polly.

• Chapter 3, "The Long Rifle"

  The girls burn their fingers touching the bright bullets Pa has just cast.