There's a sticky note in my copy of this book that says "the last page makes Ms. R. cry!"...

It's true and I guess this is from the last time I read this book to a class.

This is what gets to me:

"...What are days of Auld Lang Syne, Pa?" "They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,"... but Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting. She thought to herself, "This is now." She was glad that the cosy house and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago."

But it is, and it was when Laura wrote those words. The beginning of the book is "Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the big woods of Wisconsin..."

The magic of this and the other Little House books is, at least from an adult's point of view, that it is like a time machine. I picture an old woman sitting and writing the words which then magically bring to life all of those people of her childhood and all of those places of her childhood and all of those adventures of her childhood which have all gone silent and she brings them back to life through the bittersweet light of "long ago."

It is touching and I have put a lump in my throat all over again!

From a kid's point of view, I think it should be fascinating to hear and see how kids lived on this land in ways that are hard for twenty first century kids to imagine...and it was only 150 years ago! Only!!

The gift of this writer is that in simple words, she makes it real!

I hope you find yourself and your family getting into it easily and quickly...only 3 weeks to go!!!

Mary Ann