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Summary: Jane St. Anthony, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 17, 1998
Review: "With 'Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder,' John E. Miller has made the world safe again for devotees. . . . Miller's thorough, riveting work illuminates a complex process of authorship, and the mother and daughter behind it."
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Summary: Good for Wilder fans.
Review: A pleasant, informative biography that covers some of the same ground as the same author's Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town, this book will be welcomed by all Wilder fans.
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Summary: It takes and even handed approach to the Laura/Rose issues
Review: Although the book is written for serious students of LIW lore and at times is a little dry, I really thought it was a good read. It's definitely not for people who get riled at the mere mention that there was serious collaboration between Laura and Rose regarding her books. Of course Laura would seek out Rose's opinion and help....after all, Rose was renowned for her writing. The intention was never that Rose wrote the books for Laura but to guide her with editing and advice about the literary world. After reading some of Rose's work, you see that Laura's stoic spirit shines through her books. She was brought up to make the best of things and was buoyed by her family. If you think about it, she had plenty to be unhappy about. Living on the edge of poverty, constantly being uprooted and moved around, helping to support her family at a tender age, watching her sister go blind, the list goes on. Laura and Almanzo might not have been able to give Rose the constancy of affection and support such an intelligent and bright girl needs to thrive. They might have been more successful at this if they had had other children, but since Rose was an only child, she may have been expected to conduct herself like a little adult. This may explain why she seemed to suffer from periods of resentment and depression about her upbringing as addresssed in this book.Anyway, I digress. This book is well worth reading if you like the tiny delicious morsels of details that you didn't know about Laura, Rose or others in the Ingalls family prior to reading this book. If you want more of a general overview, you may want to consider reading another book.
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Summary: It takes and even handed approach to the Laura/Rose issues
Review: BECOMING LAURA INGALLS WILDER reads like a dissertation. Because it is an academic book, written for the history-buff crowd, it's somewhat dry. There is a great deal of information to be read here, however, and you will feel that you know "the real Laura Ingalls" after you read this book. The author is an expert on Laura Ingalls Wilder, and spent a huge amount of time in research for this book. He basically recounts as much as he can of Laura's life, based on written accounts of her, and on her own writings. Much of his book also deals with a dominant person in Laura's life: her daughter Rose. The book also features quite a few photos of Laura and her family. Die-hard fans of Laura should read this book only if they are ready for more than 250 pages of history. It's not a novel, it doesn't contain a lot of color, but it is worth reading if you really want to know every detail about Laura's life.
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Summary: A History strong on documentation
Review: BECOMING LAURA INGALLS WILDER reads like a dissertation. Because it is an academic book, written for the history-buff crowd, it's somewhat dry. There is a great deal of information to be read here, however, and you will feel that you know "the real Laura Ingalls" after you read this book. The author is an expert on Laura Ingalls Wilder, and spent a huge amount of time in research for this book. He basically recounts as much as he can of Laura's life, based on written accounts of her, and on her own writings. Much of his book also deals with a dominant person in Laura's life: her daughter Rose. The book also features quite a few photos of Laura and her family. Die-hard fans of Laura should read this book only if they are ready for more than 250 pages of history. It's not a novel, it doesn't contain a lot of color, but it is worth reading if you really want to know every detail about Laura's life.
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Summary: Interesting, yet flawed biography
Review: I enjoyed this, but like others, was aching to read more about Laura and Almanzo. I guess the books of her youth were so packed with life, it's hard to believe the Farmer Boy and Pioneer Girl could lead a quiet life in their retirement years.
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Summary: Much Ado About Protecting Laura's Authorship
Review: I found this book to be extremely wordy in terms of trying to justify Laura Ingalls Wilder's authorship of the "Little House" books. To be quite frank, Rose Wilder Lane's contributions to the "Little House" series are crucial . . . if you read "The First Four Years," which Rose DID NOT edit, it's very clear where the magic of phrasing came from for all other books in the series. John Miller should have spent more time acknowledging the contributions of both women to the "Little House" industry; instead, he spent many pages trying to discredit Rose as both a person and as a writer. Laura lived the life in the books, and that should be enough for anyone. This book is (for the most part) a waste of paper. Instead, read Holtz's biography, "Ghost In The Little House" to see better documentation of the writing power struggle between mother and daughter. Also, read "Let The Hurricanes Roar" by Rose . . . it echoes "Little House" well before the series was written.
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Summary: Very lengthy on the times, but a bit sketchy on the life
Review: I have devoloped something of a Laura Ingalls Wilder fixation over the years. I have read many biographies, mostly ones for children that focus on her childhood and apparently describe it pretty much as she described it in her books. This is the first one to try and gain some real insight into her adult years. It is interesting enough, but alas, while we get paragraph upon paragraph about the economic situations of the various towns Laura lived in and other information of that sort, there isn't a whole lot there where the person is concerned. I guess that's understandable, since she didn't leave a whole lot of revealing writings behind like her daughter Rose, and since the book gives the impression that she was very introverted, she apparently didn't open herself up that much, either. So, I guess John Miller had only a limited amount of resources to work with, but still, her character could have been fleshed out more. There are some interesting tidbits, particularly about how she once ran for election of head of her town's township, but about the person, we get very little, which is only to be expected, I guess, but unfotunate nevertheless. The book only really gets good when it talks about the creation of Laura's novels, and the collaboration between her and her daughter in seeing them to fruition. Curiously, I have never actually read any of the "Little House" books, or any of Rose's and Laura' other writings, and therefore, cannot give my opinion on who I think really wrote them, an issue that's been hotly debated in recent years. While some have claimed that Rose, a very successful writer in her own right, edited and polished them to such an extent that she was essentially the ghost writer of the novels, Miller begs to differ. He claims that Laura did know more than a little about how to write, having honed her skills for more than a decade in writing columns for a Missouri newspaper about farming. Rose did edit and polish the manuscripts, and there was much back-and-forth discusion between mother and daughter about how they should be structured, etc, but her work on them was really nothing out of the ordinary. I can't say if this is true or not, but I really enjoyed reading about it. I also enjoyed the parts in which the book tried to answer the question of whether the novels are true to life. (It says that the minute details about farm life were thoroughly reaserached and as accurate as possible, and that the family realtionships were probably not any differtn from the books, but that the facts were changed around some time, either to make the story more beleiveable or understandable or because Laura couldn't really remember them.) There appears to have been a very complex realtionship between mother and daughter, but it is yet another thing in the book that isn't really throughly documented. This is indeed a great book for history and research projects, and for fans of the Little House books. There is some intersting information, but on the whole it's too sketchy to reveal much about the real Laura, the person, which is a shame, but can't really be helped, it would seem.
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Summary: who is this book really about?
Review: I just re-read this book for the third time...unlike some reviewers, I am interested in what was going on culturally and otherwise in De Smet, Mansfield, etc. This book sheds more light on Laura's life after moving to Missouri than any other I have read thus far. I also enjoyed learning more about Almanzo and Laura's marriage. Along with "I Remember Laura" and "A Little House Sampler" one of my favorite LIW reads (Other than her actual books, of course!)
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Summary: A well-researched book on one of our greatest writers
Review: I just re-read this book for the third time...unlike some reviewers, I am interested in what was going on culturally and otherwise in De Smet, Mansfield, etc. This book sheds more light on Laura's life after moving to Missouri than any other I have read thus far. I also enjoyed learning more about Almanzo and Laura's marriage. Along with "I Remember Laura" and "A Little House Sampler" one of my favorite LIW reads (Other than her actual books, of course!)
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