Laura Ingalls is turning over in her grave.

[elfs]

Last night, Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I stopped by the public library to pick up some books for Kouryou-chan since she is now reading at a first-grade level. We found a pair of Stuart Little books and something called a "My First Little House" book, "adapted from The Little house books by Lauga Ingalls Wilder" [sic capitalization], entitled A Little House Birthday.

And the tension of the story is contained in this paragraph:

Now they were all clean for Sunday, and on Sunday mornings Laura and Mary dressed in their best clothes with fresh ribbons in theit hair. On Sundays they could not run or shout or be noisy. They must sit quietly and listen while Ma read stories to them. They might look at pictures, and they might hold their rag dolls nicely and talk to them. But there was nothing else they could do.

Laura Ingalls is turning over in her grave.

I am a secularist and I admit that, but the last thing I want is some multiculti editor in a fit of... what? political correctness? focus-group-marketing?... taking the spiritual heart out of an author's work. Laura Ingalls was a Christian, and so were the characters in her story. To turn a Sunday service into some namby-pamby "just because" takes all the meaning out of the text.

And, c'mon, kids know when an author is lying to them. There is something very creepy about the elision in this book, the avoidance of words like church or bible or Jesus. The lack of any mention of prayer-- at breakfast, at dinner, at Laura's birthday-- is glaring and ugly. It is a tragic edit, and I mourn for the sacrifice of Laura Ingall's intensity in name of creating insincere pablum that a broad but undiscerning audience looking for "kid's books", as opposed to children's literature, will swallow.

Comments

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

Yes, that paragraph is the way it was in the book. There is very little in any of the books about Laura's personal beliefs or faith. There's a lot more in the tv show than there ever was in the books. Church is referred to more as a social thing than as a religious thing, except for an occasional 'God will provide' kind of thing, but not even very much of that.

Laura didn't sing in the choir (at least in the books). She and Almanzo went to singing school. I don't recall any mention of a choir.