Garth Williams

The adventures continue for Laura Ingalls and her family as they leave their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin and set out for Kansas. They travel for many days in their covered wagon until they find the best spot to build their little house on the prairie. Soon they are planting and plowing, hunting wild ducks and turkeys, and gathering grass for their cows. Sometimes pioneer life is hard, but Laura and her folks are always busy and happy...

At first, the Ingalls lived in a sod house in Minnesota. Then Pa built a clean new house beside Plum Creek, buying the materials for it on credit, intending to pay for them with the fall wheat harvest. But just before the harvest, a strange glittering cloud suddenly blocked out the sun. Plunk! Something dropped on Laura's head, and fell to the ground. It was the biggest grasshopper she had ever seen. Millions of them descended over the country-side...

Fifteen-year-old Laura loves her prairie home, but knows it is time for her to serious about getting a teachers certificate so she can help Ma and Pa pay for her sister Mary's education at the college for the blind.

While Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the western prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State. Almanzo and his brother and sisters help with the summer planting and fall harvest. In winter there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. Almanzo wishes for just one thing-his very own horse-but he must prove that he is ready for such a big responsibility.

Fifteen-year-old Laura learns that living away from home and teaching school can be a bit frightening when most of the students are taller than she is, but every week Almanzo Wilder arrives to take her to her family for the weekend.

Tucker is a streetwise city mouse. He thought he'd seen it all. But he's never met a cricket before, which really isn't surprising, because, along with his friend Harry Cat, Tucker lives in the very heart of New York City-the Times Square subway station. Chester Cricket never intended to leave his Connecticut meadow. He'd be there still if he hadn't followed the entrancing aroma of liverwurst right into someone's picnic basket. Now, like any tourist...