Interesting Read: The Wilder Life

A few weeks back while I was browsing my libraries selection of books available for Kindle I stumbled across The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie. It follows the author, Wendy McClure's quest to learn all she can about her favorite childhood book series, the Little House books. These books were a standard read growing up in America and portrayed the life and times of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family. Somehow I missed reading these books growing up and did not get the chance to read them until I was a little bit older than the standard reader, being about 14. I feel that because of my age they did not appeal to me as much as they would have had I been a bit younger. None the less, McClure's book appealed to me because it looked at her love of a childhood classic and what made her enjoy it, then and now.

McClure's quest leads her to try some interesting things, such as butter churning in her Chicago apartment and making bread from scratch (including making her own starter). It also led her to compare the actual life of Laura vs the Laura of the books and to understand why there are differences. To me this was one of the most interesting parts. I knew that the books were based on Laura's life but I did not realize how far they really strayed from what happened. 

{via}

In this book it was interesting to follow the journey of a grown women reconnect with her childhood passion and still remain in love with it. A lot of her experiences reminded me of visiting Prince Edward Island and seeing the places that Anne of Green Gables was written about and where L.M. Montgomery lived. It is a surreal experience and it can be hard to rectify what you have always thought about a place and people with the actual place and the actual history. This is was the appeal of the book that kept me reading. I wanted to know how McClure felt about the book series and its author at the very end. How does she feel after spending the better part of a year traveling to different places to see the real location of the Little House on the Prairie, in the Big Woods, the Little Town on the Prairie, and many other locations that Laura lived. 

Over all I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to take a trip down memory lane and to learn a little about what it means to love something as a child and to love it (in a different way) as an adult. 

Happy Travels!

-B

What was your favorite childhood book? Do you still feel the same way about it?