Book Talk on Farmer Boy (1933) by Laura Ingalls Wilder

ENGL 493: Teaching Literature to Adolescents

Laura Pallaske

March 5, 2018

Outline

            The Farmer Boy book is the second in the Little House book series.  The story is about author’s husband Almanzo during his 10th and 11th years in the late-1860s.  He grew up on a large, prosperous farm near Malone, New York, learning responsibility by doing.  In the book, Almanzo had an older brother Royal and older sisters Eliza Jane and Alice.  His oldest sister Laura—who does not appear in the book—was in her twenties and out of the house by then.  Also, a younger brother Perley Day had not yet been born.

            The book detailed the farm’s never-ending daily chores, including milking cows, feeding all the animals—horses, cows, sheep, chickens, and pigs—and mucking stalls. Other chores were seasonal, such as shearing the sheep, filling the icehouse, hauling wood, and making hay.

            The chapter, “Keeping house,” is about when the Wilder children were left alone to tend the farm for a week while their parents visited a relative 10 miles away.  Their mother’s parting words—“And don’t eat all the sugar!”—didn’t deter them from making ice cream, cakes, and molasses taffy (p. 204).  The last day before their parents were due back, they hurriedly scrubbed the house, weeded the garden, cleaned the barns, and painted the henhouse.  They fretted about their eating almost all the sugar.  Tempers flared, resulting in a shoeblack splotch on the parlor’s shiny wallpaper.  The children knew a terrible punishment was inevitable.

Biography

            Laura Ingalls Wilder was best known for writing the Little House children’s books.  She was born on February 7, 1867, in a log cabin near Pepin, Wisconsin.  She joined her parents and sister Mary.  Two other sisters and a brother later followed.  Her brother died at age nine months.  The family moved often during her childhood.  In addition to Wisconsin, they lived in Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota.  

At age 15, Laura passed the test for her teaching certificate.  She began teaching in a one-room schoolhouse 12 miles from home.  A family friend, Almanzo Wilder, fetched her for weekend visits at home.  During these trips, they began courting.

            Laura and Almanzo married in 1885.  They had two children.  Their first years of married life were fraught with disaster, including ruined crops, crushing debt, their home burning to the ground, and the death of their newborn son.  In 1894, they trekked from De Smet, South Dakota, to Mansfield, Missouri, to start anew.  There they built Rocky Ridge Farm where they lived until their deaths, Almanzo in 1949 at age 92 and Laura in 1957 at age 90. 

            In the 1920s, the Wilders’ daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, convinced Laura to write about her life.  After some fits and starts, Laura produced the book Little House in the Big Woods (1932), telling when she is five years old.  She described events like the sugaring off when they harvested maple tree sap and the time that her mother slapped a bear, thinking it was Sukey, the family cow.

Laura’s book series made it to popular culture.  The books were loosely followed to create the television series, Little House on the Prairie (1974), starring Melissa Gilbert as Laura and Michael Landon as her father.

Rationale

In my experience with teaching GED courses, few adult students read, but I found that male students read much—much!—less than female students.  I think the stories in Farmer Boy might speak to male students.  I discovered Farmer Boy as a 10-year-old, but I have three brothers, so I’ve always felt I could relate well to a boy’s point-of-view.  This book remains one of my treasured reads.

According to Virginia Kirkus—book editor when Farmer Boy was published—the book is the “story of a vanishing phase of American life” (Wikipedia, 2017, para. 4).  Pivotal texts—like Farmer Boy—are important because they tell of days gone by.  Alt text: LIW’s Little House in the Big Woods.

Teaching Ideas

1.      Discussion: Students discuss descriptions in Farmer Boy of the farm where Almanzo Wilder grew up and how the actual farm is shown on YouTube documentaries. 

2.      Research project/essay: Students research life in the 1860s.  Sample topics include the lack of electricity, transportation, maintaining hygiene, medical care, or the hard work necessary to make a daily living.  Students write a compare/contrast essay about their findings.

3.      Ice cream activity: The class makes homemade ice cream like Almanzo and his brother and sisters made while their parents were away (Old-fashioned, 2017).  During a discussion, students compare/contrast their experiences with that of the Wilder children from the book.

Obstacles

Whether administrators, parents/guardians, or the students themselves would challenge my reasoning for teaching Farmer Boy, I would offer the following rationale: 

The book is written at a fourth- to sixth-grade level, according to several readability formulas.  There is a chapter about what a teacher does to students who bully him.  Overall, the subject matter is very wholesome with no death, sex, or foul language.  Therefore, some adult students might think this book or its subject matter is below them.  They might question how a book written 85 years ago about events from 150 years ago could be relevant for them today. 

I will tell anyone who asks that the events described in this book are about keeping the family unit together during a time when daily living was difficult.  Keeping family intact is a common theme in many contemporary texts. 

References

Book snob for discerning readers. (2011, February 20). Farmer boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Retrieved from https://bookssnob.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/farmer-boy-by-laura-ingalls-wilder/

[BradRoss63]. (2016, September 2016). Almanzo Wilder farm. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWsDWUcWcY4

[Dean Butler]. (2015, January 16). Almanzo Wilder: Life before Laura comes to Amazon and iTunes. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKOyCV 9PvDw

[Home Town Cable Network]. (2016, May 9). OLC – Almanzo Wilder farm 5-27-08. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZJl87u7UxQ

Old-fashioned Farmer Boy ice cream recipe. (2017). Little house on the prairie. Retrieved from http://littlehouseontheprairie.com/old-fashioned-ice-cream-recipe/

Welcome to the Wilder homestead. (2017). Almanzo Wilder farm. Retrieved from https://almanzowilderfarm.com/

Wikipedia. (2017, October 17). Farmer boy. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmer_Boy 

Wilder, L. I.  (1933). Farmer boy. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Zochert, D. (1976). Laura: The life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. New York, NY: Avon Books.