On the Banks of Plum Creek

On the Banks of Plum Creek

File:OnTheBanksOfPlumCreek.jpg Front dustjacket with Sewell illustration
Author	Laura Ingalls Wilder
Illustrator	Helen Sewell and Mildred Boyle Garth Williams (1953)
Country	United States
Series	Little House
Genre	Children's novel Family saga Western
Publisher	Harper & Brothers
Publication date	October 20, 1937
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	239; 338 pp.
OCLC	1291009
LC Class	PZ7.W6461 On
Preceded by	Little House on the Prairie (novel)
Followed by	By the Shores of Silver Lake

On the Banks of Plum Creek is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1937, the fourth of nine books in her Little House series. It is based on a few years of her childhood when the Ingalls family lived at Plum Creek near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, during the 1870s. The original dustjacket proclaimed, "The true story of an American pioneer family by the author of Little House in the Big Woods".

Plum Creek was one runner-up for the Newbery Medal in 1938, as were the next four Little House books through 1944. In retrospect the five novels are called Newbery Honor Books.

Plot summary

Having left their little house on the Kansas prairie, the Ingalls family travels by covered wagon to Minnesota and settles in a dugout on the banks of Plum Creek. Pa trades his horses Pet and Patty to the property owner (a man named Hanson, who wants to go west) for the land and crops. He later gets two new horses as Christmas presents for the family, which Laura and her sister Mary name "Sam" and "David". Pa soon builds a new, above-ground, wooden house for the family, trusting that their first crop of wheat will pay for the lumber and materials.

Now that they live near a town, Laura and Mary go to school for the first time. There they make friends, but also meet the town storekeeper's daughter, Nellie Oleson, who makes fun of Laura and Mary for being "country girls." Laura and Mary attend a party at the Olesons' home, and Ma has Laura and Mary invite all the girls (including Nellie) to a party at their house to reciprocate.

The family goes through very hard times when grasshoppers (actually Rocky Mountain Locusts) decimate the much-anticipated wheat crop, and lay so many eggs that there is no hope of a crop the following year. For two harvest seasons, Pa is forced to walk three hundred miles east to find work on farms that escaped the grasshopper plague.

The book ends with Laura's father returning safely to the house after becoming lost near their home during a severe four-day blizzard. Laura is portrayed in this book as being seven to nine years old.

Walnut Grove

Although Plum Creek (in Redwood County, Minnesota) is near the town of Walnut Grove, the name of the town is not mentioned in the book.

Reception

Virginia Kirkus had handled Ingalls Wilder's debut novel Little House in the Big Woods for Harper & Brothers as its children's book editor from 1926 to 1932. In Kirkus Reviews, her semi-monthly bulletin from 1933, she awarded On the Banks of Plum Creek a starred review (as she did its one predecessor and two successors, books 3 to 6 and no others). "If anything, it is better than her enchanting Little House in the Big Woods. ... Laura is always in trouble, but a staunch young person when brought to the text. It is perfect Americana."

On the Banks of Plum Creek was the first of five Newbery Medal runners-up for Ingalls Wilder, books 4 to 8 in the series.

In 1997 "On the Banks of Plum Creek" was challenged in the Fort Garry School division by two parents. The two parents, who lived in Winnipeg, took issue with the portrayal of Native Americans in the great literary work and wanted a local school division to pull the book from shelves and lessons. The complaint was eventually withdrawn, but it relegated On the Banks of Plum Creek to the ranks of other great literary works, such as J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, that have been challenged and sometimes banned in Canadian schools and libraries. The word "Indian" appears 12 times in the book, most of them about their time in Indian Territory. On page 143, Mary tells Laura to keep her sunbonnet on or "You'll be as brown as an Indian, and what will the town girls think of us? On page 218, Laura says "I wish I was an Indian and never had to wear clothes!" As Brock's liaison librarian heading up Freedom to Read week celebrations at the university, Cotton said most people are surprised to learn some of their favourite titles are among the hundreds of books taken to task every year for language and images deemed offensive by some.

Publication

After failing at farming in the Dakotas in the 1890s—drought, illness, and fire contributing—Laura moved with her husband, Almanzo, and young daughter, Rose, to the Ozarks in Missouri. Decades later, Wilder, who had been writing columns and editing for a regional farm newspaper, was encouraged by her daughter Rose, a published author whose last name was now Lane, to write a memoir of growing up on the frontier for national serialization—mostly for financial reasons. Wilder wrote Pioneer, the edgier, grown-up version of her Little House series, before she wrote the children’s books. When it turned out to be unsellable to publishers, Wilder’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, suggested they rethink it. Some of the real-life rough stuff was either softened or taken out entirely for a younger audience.

External links

• Little House Books at HarperCollins Children's Books