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Review: “Little House on the Prairie” Series

June 12, 2025 by kmerwin

Children’s Librarian Helen Morgus recommends the “Little House on the Prairie” series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

My sweet dad read Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder to me when I could not have been more than five years old. We loved and identified with Laura—headstrong and creative—and her Pa, a paragon of manhood. Craving an escape into a story of American industriousness in the face of hardship, I returned to Laura Ingalls Wilder this past winter and was abundantly rewarded.

The pillars of Wilder’s writing are her meticulous descriptions of the technology of the 1880s, her passion for the land, her love of family, and the Wilders’ sense of duty and devotion to one another. Herein lie many lessons for young readers, and adults will pick up on the tenderness and mutual respect between Laura’s parents, Charles and Caroline.

But there is a troubling flip side.

Wilder wrote her books from the perspective of the late 19th century in which she was embedded. For example, she encounters people of other races, and with a sense of superiority, and adults discipline children with the rod and the whip. Notwithstanding spankings, a blackface minstrel show, Caroline’s visceral fear of Indians, and the unavoidable whiff of Manifest Destiny, there is more to admire about the Wilders than there is to condemn.

Wilder’s accounts (written in her 60s) deal with poverty, hunger, cold, disease, and other trials from a distance that takes the sting out of them. I had to ask myself: was all that self-reliance simply just that? What other forces could have been at work in the Wilders’ successes and failures?

Prairie Fires: the American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser, helped answer these questions. Fraser takes us through the period covered in Wilder’s children’s books and through her adult life with her husband Almanzo and their daughter, Rose. Using letters, diaries and the public record, she puts together a more complete historical portrait. I found Fraser’s dive into the U.S. government’s policies toward Indians, and her treatment of the economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries especially helpful.

The “Little House on the Prairie” series withstands the test of time. Perhaps most because it reminds readers of the grit that is baked into the character of people who call themselves Americans.

Filed Under: Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More, Uncategorized

La guerra de la limonada

May 27, 2025 by kmerwin

by Jacqueline Davies

For a full hour, he poured lemonade. The world is a thirsty place, he thought, as he nearly emptied his fourth pitcher of the day. And I am the Lemonade King.

Fourth-grader Evan Treski is people-smart. He’s good at talking with people, even grownups. His younger sister, Jessie, on the other hand, is math-smart, but not especially good with people. So when the siblings’ lemonade stand war begins, there really is no telling who will win–or even if their fight will ever end. Brimming with savvy marketing tips for making money at any business, definitions of business terms, charts, diagrams, and even math problems, this fresh, funny,emotionally charged novel subtly explores how arguments can escalate beyond anyone’s intent.

Awards: 2009 Rhode Island Children’s Book Award, 2007 New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing, North Carolina Children’s Book Award 2011, 2011 Nutmeg Award (Connecticut)

Evan Treski  es un estudiante de cuarto grado que sabe tratar con la gente. Puede hablar muy bien con todos, incluso con los adultos. Por otro lado, Jessie , su hermana menor que también está en cuarto grado, es muy inteligente con las matemáticas pero le cuesta entender a las personas. Ella sabe que no demuestra sentimientos. Entonces, cuando comienza la guerra de limonada, no se sabe quién ganará, y mucho menos si la guerra terminará.

Por primera vez en español presentamos esta combinación perfecta de humor, matemáticas y negocios, escrita por Jacqueline Davies y traducida por las premiadas Alma Flor Ada y F. Isabel Campoy. Es una novela conmovedora que presenta una relación única entre hermanos y analiza de manera sutil de qué manera las discusiones pueden intensificarse más allá de lo esperado.

Find it in print and ebook here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

When Women Ruled the World

March 11, 2025 by kmerwin

by Kara Cooney

This riveting narrative explores the lives of six remarkable female pharaohs, from Hatshepsut to Cleopatra-women who ruled with real power-and shines a piercing light on our own perceptions of women in power today.

Female rulers are a rare phenomenon-but thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, women reigned supreme. Regularly, repeatedly, and with impunity, queens like Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Cleopatra controlled the totalitarian state as power-brokers and rulers. But throughout human history, women in positions of power were more often used as political pawns in a male-dominated society. What was so special about ancient Egypt that provided women this kind of access to the highest political office? What was it about these women that allowed them to transcend patriarchal obstacles? What did Egypt gain from its liberal reliance on female leadership, and could today’s world learn from its example?

Celebrated Egyptologist Kara Cooney delivers a fascinating tale of female power, exploring the reasons why it has seldom been allowed through the ages, and why we should care.

Find it in our collection here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Women of History

March 11, 2025 by kmerwin

For many millennia, the history of the world has been written by, for, and about men. This fascinating volume takes a different approach, offering brief biographies of dozens of women who have played a role in key world events. Learn more about the influence and impact of ladies like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Pocahontas, Marie Antoinette, and many others.

Find it on Libby here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

A Woman of No Importance 

March 11, 2025 by kmerwin

by Sonia Purnell

In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: “She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.”

The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill’s “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and–despite her prosthetic leg–helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it.

Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day.

Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall–an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity. A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman’s fierce persistence helped win the war.

Accolades

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Chosen as a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by NPR, the New York Public Library, Amazon, the Seattle Times, the Washington Independent Review of Books, PopSugar, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, BookBrowse, the Spectator, and the Times of London

Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography

“Excellent…This book is as riveting as any thriller, and as hard to put down.” — The New York Times Book Review

“A compelling biography of a masterful spy, and a reminder of what can be done with a few brave people — and a little resistance.” – NPR

“A meticiulous history that reads like a thriller.” – Ben Macintyre

A never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine.

Find it in our collection here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Sex and the Constitution:

March 11, 2025 by kmerwin

Sex, Religion, and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-first Century

by Geoffrey R. Stone

Beginning his volume in the ancient and medieval worlds, Geoffrey R. Stone demonstrates how the Founding Fathers, deeply influenced by their philosophical forebears, saw traditional Christianity as an impediment to the pursuit of happiness and to the quest for human progress. Acutely aware of the need to separate politics from the divisive forces of religion, the Founding Fathers crafted a constitution that expressed the fundamental values of the Enlightenment.

Although the Second Great Awakening later came to define America through the lens of evangelical Christianity, nineteenth-century Americans continued to view sex as a matter of private concern, so much so that sexual expression and information about contraception circulated freely, abortions before “quickening” remained legal, and prosecutions for sodomy were almost nonexistent.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reversed such tolerance, however, as charismatic spiritual leaders and barnstorming politicians rejected the values of our nation’s founders. Spurred on by Anthony Comstock, America’s most feared enforcer of morality, new laws were enacted banning pornography, contraception, and abortion, with Comstock proposing that the word “unclean” be branded on the foreheads of homosexuals. Women increasingly lost control of their bodies, and birth control advocates, like Margaret Sanger, were imprisoned for advocating their beliefs. In this new world, abortions were for the first time relegated to dank and dangerous back rooms.

The twentieth century gradually saw the emergence of bitter divisions over issues of sexual “morality” and sexual freedom. Fiercely determined organizations and individuals on both the right and the left wrestled in the domains of politics, religion, public opinion, and the courts to win over the soul of the nation. With its stirring portrayals of Supreme Court justices, Sex and the Constitution reads like a dramatic gazette of the critical cases they decided, ranging from Griswold v. Connecticut (contraception), to Roe v. Wade (abortion), to Obergefell v. Hodges (gay marriage), with Stone providing vivid historical context to the decisions that have come to define who we are as a nation.

Now, though, after the 2016 presidential election, we seem to have taken a huge step backward, with the progress of the last half century suddenly imperiled. No one can predict the extent to which constitutional decisions safeguarding our personal freedoms might soon be eroded, but Sex and the Constitution is more vital now than ever before.

Find it in our collection here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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