These Happy Golden Years
Book - 1971
- Details
- Full Record
- Additional Info
Searching for more content…
Searching for more content…0064400085
Opinion
From the critics
Community Activity
Quotes
Add a QuoteKitty felt her responsibility. She thought that she should hunt for them as well as for her own kittens. She brought in more gophers than all of them could eat, and every day she piled the extra ones by the house door for Ma.
"I declare," Ma said, "I was never so embarrassed by a cat's generosity."
“It is a good idea sometimes to think of the importance and dignity of our every-day duties. It keeps them from being so tiresome; besides, others are apt take us at our own valuation. ”
“As you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that things truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. It is not the things you have that make you happy. It is love and kindness and helping each other and just plain being good. ”
“Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small, but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds would make it flicker because it would not give up.”
“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.”
Age Suitability
Add Age SuitabilitySummary
Add a SummaryAs the story begins, Pa is taking Laura 12 miles from home in the dead of winter to her first teaching assignment at Brewster settlement. Laura, only 15 and a schoolgirl herself, is apprehensive as this is both the first time she has left home and the first school she has taught. She is determined to complete her assignment and earn $40 to help her sister Mary, who is attending Vinton College for the Blind in Iowa.
This first school proves difficult for her. Laura must board with the Brewsters in their two-room claim shanty, sleeping on a narrow sofa behind a curtain in their bedroom. The Brewsters are an unhappy family and Laura is deeply uncomfortable observing the way husband and wife quarrel. In one particularly unsettling incident, she wakes in the night to see Mrs. Brewster standing over her husband with a knife. Mrs. Brewster seems to resent Laura particularly, and is rarely pleasant to her.
Comment
Add a CommentI absolutely loved this book! I love the whole Laura Ingalls Wilder series, they are TERRIFIC!
I really liked this book! I own the whole series and I recommend this! After this there is one more book in The Little House Series then after that you can read Laura's daughter Rose's books. Those are not written by Laura, but they are still nice to read on about the Wilder family. I read all the Little House and Rose Years books....all really good. I have read the older comments, and yes I agree Almanzo was a lot older than Laura...I wish he had been a little younger, so that they could have both gone to school with each other...but I guess it was common for the guy to be older than the girl. I guess that why her parents weren't that too surprised or totally rejected their daughter dating this older guy.
I seriously cried reading this book - happiness and sadness at the same time. The love story is so adorable and I love how patient Almanzo is. He listens to her and is such a gentleman. She grows to love him and she also grows up. She realizes she's going to have to move away from her parents' house someday forever. It really hit home for me because I got married and had the same feelings as her. The songs were all really beautiful.
It is so nice to read how much Laura learns and appreciates fully just how exceptional her home life is; how very happy it is in stark comparison to her life when she goes off on her own for the first time, to teach and is boarded in a home with a woman who is mentally unstable and threatens her husband with a knife through the night.
I think until this point in her life, she had rather taken it for granted as she had been unknowingly sheltered from the harsher realities of the world.
It is nice to read of the unfolding (albeit slow) love between her and Almanzo - I do think her shyness shows through in just how little she shares.
It's funny that in this book series she indicates Almanzo is a boy and lied to get his land claim but in fact, he was a full ten years older than Laura and was more her father's friend than her own - which also explains her surprise at him wanting to court her.
I guess she was ashamed of their age gap at at the time she wrote the books. I've seen pictures of them as an old couple and it is really endearing to see such enduring love - they were really meant for each other and lived through a lot together.
I love all of her books and read them over and over but the inaccuracy around Almanzo's age indicates to me there were some things she chose to not write about 100% accurately.
A beautiful story of love and life :]
i enjoyed it and loved it!!!!!!!!!!!!
I absolutely love these books. My favorite in the little house series.
I love these happy golden years. I think every girl should read these books
I like the books.
Two very scary things that never get explained to her happen to Laura in this book. At the beginning of the book, while teaching school, Laura boards with a depressed woman who tries to commit suicide with a butcher knife in the middle of the night. At the end of the book, Laura has her wedding night with Almanzo Wilder.