Farmer Boy

Laura Ingalls begins her memoir of her husband's upbringing with an anecdote about his school days that will resonate with most of your children who are reading or hearing this story for the first time. While Almanzo and his siblings behave themselves and do their best to learn their lessons, the teacher, Mr Corse, has to deal with the big boys. The big boys swagger and disturb the class, and pride themselves on being unmanagable. But Mr Corse manages them, all right, with the surprising help of Almanzo's father.

Almanzo is the youngest member of a loving, hard-working family. His father and mother run the family farm. His older brother, Royal, is 13. His older sisters are Eliza Jane who is 12 and bossy, and Alice who is 10. It's a family similar to many that still exist all over middle America.

But they lived in a different time.

Almanzo is expected to help with chores no matter the weather. He feeds and waters the stock every morning and evening, does the milking, helps with hauling wood, picking berries, butchering livestock, churning butter, cutting ice for the ice house, gathering chestnuts, and weeding and harvesting the garden. He goes to school with his siblings at certain times of the year when it doesn't interfere with seasonal chores, and he often volunteers for more chores so he can stay home. And in his spare time, he trains his calves to be yoked together so that they can plow someday.

Three times during the course of the year, the family goes into town. First is the Independence Day celebration in July, second is the county fair in the fall; the family goes to the fair three days in a row and are thoroughly sick of the crowds and people and entertainment by the time it's over; and third, is when Mr Wilder's hay crop is so extensive that he bales some of it and takes it to town to sell. On this occasion, Almanzo accompanies him to town and what happens to him there may change the whole course of his life!

Farmer Boy (#2 in the series) describes just one year in Almanzo's life,

the year he is 8 and 9 years old,  living on his family farm in 1870s upstate New York. Many of us refer to the farmer boy fondly by first name; he grew up to marry Laura Ingalls of Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie fame. Together, these three volumes, and the remaining volumes of the series, give us our first glimpse into the lives of the pioneers of our country, those hardy individuals who carved meaningful lives out of the American wilderness.

How to critique such an iconic, ubiquitous book?

This memoir of life a century-and-a-half ago has been one of the staples of childhood for the last 90 years; your parents read it, your grandparents read it. Now you want to read it to your littles. Is is still appropriate and/or relevant? The question of appropriateness is up to you, but what better way to teach the episodes of the history of our country to little ones? Through the eyes of a boy their own age, they will begin to understand what sacrifices had to be made and what hard work was required to create a family, a farm, and a town out of the woods and fields of rural America.

In my experience, anything your might find objectionable in this book, due to modern sensibilities, is very short and can easily be skipped while reading aloud.

These might be references to “whipping” as a punishment, and a couple of stereotypical comments about Native Americans. Brief occurrences of harsh sibling treatment is promptly resolved and punished.

One issue that remains unresolved and provides a humorous chapter is an anecdote about Mr and Mrs Wilder going away for a week and leaving the children unsupervised. As Almanzo is blacking the stove in his mother's fancy parlor, he is so enraged at his sister that he throws a blacking brush at her, and stains the wallpaper. Even scrubbing will not remove the stain. So his sister “rescues” him by finding a roll of the same wallpaper in the attic and cutting out a portion of  the design, applying it to the stained spot. And just in time, as company arrives the next day and are invited to sit in the parlor! To the reader's knowledge, their mother never finds out about the incident.

CONTENT CONSIDERATIONS

Cousins are unkind, arguing with and bullying each other, a French farm hand is described as “swearing in French,” one use of the phrase “Shut up!”

Violence:

Whippings (thrashings) are referred to as punishment and Almanzo admits he “deserves” one for his foolishness; Royal agrees. The boys believe that bad boys find nothing but a “switch” in their stockings on Christmas morning. To stop their squabbling, Royal knocks Almanzo's and Frank's (his cousin's) heads together til they see stars.

Stereotypes:

“Must you yell like Comanches?” and “It was a wonderful day for playing wild Indian...”