Here is what each book is about and what I think, all in my own words. I tried not to tell the endings, except some of them everybody already knows, like that Laura marries Almanzo. (Sorry if you didn't know.)

Laura is little and her family lives in a log house in the woods in Wisconsin, with wolves and bears outside. It's mostly about how they did everything themselves: smoking meat, making butter and cheese, and going to Grandpa's when the sap runs for maple sugar. When they butcher the pig, Pa blows up the pig's bladder like a balloon for the girls to play with, which is gross but also kind of neat. One time Ma slaps a cow on the behind in the dark and it turns out to be a BEAR. I love this book because it's cozy, like being inside with the fire going while it snows outside, and Pa plays the fiddle every night.

This one isn't about Laura at all. It's about Almanzo Wilder when he was a boy on his family's big farm in New York State, the boy Laura marries later. Almanzo is ALWAYS hungry and the book tells about every single thing he eats, and it made me hungry the whole time. He grows a giant pumpkin by feeding it milk and takes it to the fair. What he wants more than anything is a colt of his own to train. This book made me wish I lived on a farm, except for getting up before it's light out.

The family leaves the Big Woods in a covered wagon and goes all the way to Kansas. Pa builds a log house with help from their neighbor Mr. Edwards. The whole family gets sick with fever and ague and a doctor helps them. At Christmas, Mr. Edwards walks all the way to town and crosses the creek in the cold to bring the girls presents, a tin cup and a peppermint stick and a penny each, and that is my favorite part of any book. The land they build on belongs to the Osage people, and Ma says some mean things about them that made me feel bad. My teacher says the settlers came onto land that was already somebody's, and I think that is true. The family ends up having to leave.

MY FAVORITE! The family moves to Minnesota and lives in a house dug into the side of the creek bank, with grass growing on the roof. One time an ox walks right onto the roof and its leg comes through the ceiling! Then Pa builds them a real house with boards from town. Laura goes to school for the first time and meets Nellie Oleson, who is stuck-up and mean, and Laura gets her back at the creek with the leeches. Then grasshoppers come in a giant cloud and eat all the wheat, and Pa has to walk far away to work. And at the end Pa gets lost in a blizzard for three days. I won't tell you what he eats to stay alive, but it was supposed to be for Christmas. It's my favorite because it's in my state and because I've been there.

This one starts out sad. Mary has been very sick and now she is blind, and Pa asks Laura to be Mary's eyes and tell her everything she sees. Then something sad happens to Jack. (I warned you on the other page.) Then the family rides on a train for the first time ever, out to Dakota Territory, where Pa works at a railroad camp. They spend the winter alone in the surveyors' house by the lake, and then Pa goes to get them a homestead claim. I liked how Laura changes in this book. She has to grow up a lot.

The scary one! Blizzards from October until spring, and the trains can't get through, and the whole town almost starves. I wrote a lot about this one on my main page. The bravest person in the book is Almanzo. The second bravest is Ma, because she keeps everybody going even when there is nothing to eat but brown bread and potatoes. When the train finally comes at the end I cheered out loud and my brother asked what was wrong with me.

Now they live partly in town and Laura is a teenager. She gets a job sewing shirts to help earn money so Mary can go to a college for blind people in Iowa. There are parties and a big Fourth of July and school exhibitions, and Nellie Oleson is back (ugh). Almanzo starts walking Laura home. At the end Laura gets her certificate to be a teacher, and she is only fifteen! I can't imagine being a teacher at fifteen. I can't even imagine being fifteen.

Laura teaches her first school, far from home, and she is so homesick. But every Friday Almanzo drives out in his sleigh in the freezing cold to bring her home for the weekend. That is how you know he really likes her. They go on buggy rides all summer and he gives her a ring, and they get married. My grandma says this is the most romantic book. I think it's okay. There are a lot of buggy rides.

This book is different from the others. Laura wrote it but it wasn't printed until a long time after she died, in 1971. It's about the first four years Laura and Almanzo are married, living on a farm. Their daughter Rose is born. But a lot of bad things happen, like hail and sickness and a fire, and it's sad. It doesn't feel finished like the other books. Grandma Jo says I'll like it better when I'm older. I'll try it again when I'm twelve.