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.

"Almanzo Wilder celebrates his birthday by breaking in a pair of calves and sledding on his new sled"--Verso page.

A year after moving to their farm in the Ozarks, Laura and Almanzo Wilder and their young daughter, Rose, have settled into their new home with a successful vegetable harvest and the beginnings of an apple orchard.

After Almanzo helps with the chores on his family's farm in the New York countryside, he joins his parents, brother, and sisters for dinner and a winter evening at home.

Features stories about Laura's father and life on the frontier.