Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Review of an Audiobook

 

💙 Little House in the Big Woods is the one that started the series of nine autobiographical novels written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, based on her childhood memories in the American Midwest.

💙 The story is told from Laura's perspective, who, in this book, is four years old. The family consists of Pa Charles, Ma Caroline, Mary - Laura's older sister, and baby Carrie who was just born. They lived in a log cabin at the edge of Big Woods in Wisconsin. The Ingallses are busy preparing for the upcoming winter. They are butchering the animals and preserving the meat; harvesting fruits and vegetables from their garden to be stored in the attic. Everyone is lending their hands to the works.

💙 At night, when they are tired from the day hard work, Laura feels warm and contented by the blazing fire, the safety of their sturdy log house, the warmth of family love, while Pa's singing and playing his fiddle.

illustration by Garth Williams

💙 Then the freezing winter came. There's Laura's cousins, aunt and uncle staying with them; the joy of finding presents inside their stockings (Laura got a beautiful doll she named Charlotte), and of course, delicious foods. It is so satisfying to follow Laura's excitement in every simple thing she's enjoying, like when she's scooping snow from outside of grandma's house, then grandma poured hot sticky maple syrup on it to make a sweet candy. It's really a bliss when one can obtain so much happiness from little things like that!

💙 The joy continues on next in spring, summer, and fall. Of course, there're scary moments too when one lives on the edge of a big woods, such as when Ma and Laura went out to the barn, and seeing the shadow of what they thought is their cow, Suki. Ma slapped the animal, which turned out to be not a cow, but a bear! I couldn't imagine how scared they were (including the bear... it might be more scared for it to be slapped by human like that!!) 🤣

illustration by Garth Williams

💙 I enjoyed this book in audiobook version, narrated by Cherry Jones. Let me tell you, one of my favorites is Pa's fiddle. Every time there's a scene where he's singing and playing his fiddle, the narrator sings accordingly, accompanied by a fiddle play (played by Paul Woodiel)! That only enhanced the reading sensation; I felt as if I was transported to the Ingallses' log house by the big woods on a cold night!

💙 I loved also Pa's stories. The one when he heard a scary voice in the wood when he's a boy coming late from running errand, for example, which turned out to be a screech owl's! 🤣

💙 But the funniest one is Pa's story about grandpa & his brothers' sled riding when they were kids, and the black pig. One day they sneaked out of the house on a Sunday afternoon while their father fell asleep, and rode the sleigh down the hill, when a pig appeared suddenly in front of them out of the wood. They couldn't stop the fast going sleigh, so the pig ended up landing on the boy's lap and they sleighed down with the scared pig squealing, passing the house to the astonishment of their father!🤣🤣 That was so funny I had to stop the audio for a minute to laugh out loud!

💙 It was a so satisfying reading experience, that I planned to read through the whole series (I have only read Little House on the Prairie so far) from audiobook. Cherry Jones is such a perfect narrator for this series!

Rating: 5/5