Laura Ingalls Wilder and Shades of Gray

As a child, I absolutely adored the "Little House" books.  I still do.  I was surprised when I wrote at Epinions for all those years that some of the books hadn't been reviewed there.  I took care of that.

The books were simply written for a child or young adult audience.  That is quite obvious when you read them from an adult perspective.  It's also interesting when you explore beyond the books and find out stories about the family that weren't selected to be a part of the books.  For that reason, I participate in several groups about "the REAL Laura Ingalls Wilder."  (Don't even get me started on the television show - about the only similarity are the names.)

NPR recently published a story with the headline "Should We Read It To Our Children".  In some ways, this was a poor choice of a headline.  It was posted to the group by someone with an agenda of course (he would later rage against his tax dollars being used to support NPR).  The article itself was not a bad one, though.  It called into question some of the characterizations of the book.  In particular, the family settling on what was then "Indian Territory" and gambling that the government would kick the Indians out and give the land to the white squatters free or very cheap.  That didn't happen.  The book doesn't really get into the politics behind what happened - just that Pa and Ma settled here and then had to leave, something Pa was quite angry about.  There is also a lot said about Ma's dislike of Indians in general.

As a child, I didn't grasp what was happening.  As I got older and into high school and actually studied history, I realized the truth behind what had happened.  I read the books over and over throughout my life, so they were usually fresh in my mind.  I reasoned that something had either happened in Ma's life or she had heard some horrific stories that caused her feelings about Indians.  In "The Long Winter" an Indian comes to warn the town about the impending winter and Pa seems to have a great deal of reverence for them.

Children want to see the word in simplistic terms.  It's up to us as parents to introduce the shades of gray that the world operates in as they are ready for it.  I don't know that I'd talk to a five year-old about "Manifest Destiny" but I might watch Pocahontas as a way of showing there were differing sides.  Neither is completely historically accurate, but for children it's a good way to start their curiosity of trying to seek the truth of the situation.

Just as when you dig deeper into the Ingalls family, there is more to it.  There was a case where Pa skipped out on rent to someone - the family left in the middle of the night to avoid the landlord he owed money to.  I can't remember how it was justified, maybe he was mean or something, but this wasn't included in the stories.  It doesn't mean that Pa wasn't a good person or that it discounts all of the good things the family did do.  It just means they are human like the rest of us and sometimes we do things we might regret later in life.

In the group this was posted in, though, I would say the majority of the people who responded to the post didn't read the article, only the headline.  The people who did read the article pretty much came away with, yes, you need to know the context as you get older but it's fine for kids.  Of course, the original poster didn't like that.  He said NPR was trying to equate the "Little House" books to Confederate monuments and was angry that his tax dollars were supporting NPR's "agenda".  All this was done as a way of stirring up people against NPR - that was the whole purpose of the post.  Looking at the OP's profile, he's obviously a Trump supporter, so my guess is this is part of the way they are trying to shut down opinions they don't agree with on the internet and get NPR off the air.