Beth Bonini's Reviews > On the Banks of Plum Creek

No pesky mess of grasshoppers can beat us! We’ll do something! You’ll see! We’ll get along somehow.

This was the most iconic and memorable ‘Little House’ book of my childhood. Perhaps that has something to do with the overlap with the popular 1970s/80s television series. In this book, the Ingalls family settles in Walnut Grove, Minnesota and for the first time Laura and Mary go to school and church. (There is a lot of emphasis on hair ribbons.) The spoiled little madam Nellie Olsen - whose father is a shopkeeper - becomes Laura’s nemesis in this book, and she provides an interesting foil for both Laura’s personality and the dawning understanding that Laura is a ‘country girl’, not to mention poor.

For the first time, there is a real contrast between farm life and town life - exemplified in the wonderfully detailed scene of Nellie’s party, and then the return hospitality of Laura’s party. Although the Ingalls family is aspirational, and has high standards, there is a real worry about money and the scarcity of necessities (especially shoes) in this book. There is the familiar ritual of house building - Pa converts their sod house into a proper house with ‘boughten’ wood and a stove - but even a child will feel the anxiety about how the family borrows against the future. The persistence of farmer debt - in other words, the tendency to borrow against a crop before it comes to fruition - becomes a theme in this book that will carry on throughout the rest of the series.

Although family life is still pre-eminent, particularly during the second half of the book which is marked by one disaster after another, there is far more ‘settlement’ and much less wild life and adventure than in the first two books. Indeed, the main source of ‘wild life’ are the horrible grasshoppers which ruin Charles Ingalls’ crops two years in a row. Those relentless grasshoppers, who strip the land of everything edible, are terrifying; far more frightening than the bear and panther of the earlier books.

Laura has a fierce pride and a hot temper and both come into play more and more in this book. She is also courageous, and that quality is also necessary as natural disasters come thick and fast. At the beginning of the book, Laura often gets into trouble of her own making; but in the second half of the book, her courage helps avert disaster. Charles Ingalls, ‘Pa’, is often missing in this novel and the loss of his strong presence is keenly felt by Laura. She often has to step into this gap and help out her mother.

Rereading this book was a vivid experience, partly because I had such a sense of dread about what is coming for the Ingalls family. In addition to old dangers like prairie fire, there are new ones - chiefly the grasshoppers, but also blizzards. Although many possible disasters are avoided, and the bonds of the family unit stay strong, there is way too much drama (some of it uncomfortably close) to make this a ‘cosy’ read.