Little House in the Big Woods

This series of children’s novels written by Laura Ingalls Wilder is based on her childhood growing up in the American Midwest. The first book, “Little House in the Big Woods,” focuses on Laura Ingalls through her early childhood, following her through harvesting sap to make maple syrup and farm duties from smoking meat to birthing calves. This book is a sweet and wholesome beginning to a series that depicts early American pioneer life in the Midwest through a familial and heartwarming lens. This is more a story of growing up, childhood, and learning lessons than it is a historical account, and I would count this as a must-read for kids. Although the second book in the series, Farmer Boy, deviates to follow a different character, the rest of the books focus on Laura and the Ingalls family.