Here it is! The new site is launched!

The sparkly new web site is finally here!

It’s called Beyond Little House, and you can get to it this way.

Stay Tuned!

Sorry for the long hiatus, but the wait will be worth it. A new and improved blog is on the way!

Little House Musical Web Site Is Up!

Psst … there’s a new Little House website out there. The national tour of “Little House on the Prairie: The Musical” begins next fall and it’s got a companion web site. Check this space as content is added to the musical’s website. Right now it’s sparse and temporary, but enter your email address and they’ll send you updates.

The Long Winter Knows Narrative Arc

The imminent recession seems to have brought out the Little House reader in all of us. Especially readers of The Long Winter.

First Lizzie Skurnick dedicates a Fine Lines column to The Long Winter and its parallels to today’s financial atmosphere.

Now here’s the latest, an essay from the Globe and Mail. It’s a finely crafted piece on appreciating the narrative arc in The Long Winter — arguably the only book in the series with a genuine plot — and lamenting the media advising us on how best to exist in this financial landscape before we’re truly mired in the worst of it.

Plus there’s cool stuff about dollhouses.

This Just In — 2010 Conference In The Works!

Amy Mattson Lauters, editor/author of The Rediscovered Writings of Rose Wilder Lane, Literary Journalist, reports that Minnesota State University, Mankato, her academic home, has agreed to host a summer 2010 conference dedicated to Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane.

Specific dates have yet to be finalized. MSU is located in Mankato, Minn., just an hour and a half from Walnut Grove, Minn., site of On the Banks of Plum Creek, and three and half hours from De Smet, S.D., site of the final five Little House books. It’s an hour southeast of Minneapolis, and the regional shopping and commerce hub for south central Minnesota.

Planning for the conference rests in the hands of fans and volunteers, some of whom are meeting for a “Laurapalooza” event in July 2009 in De Smet.

“I’m really excited that my university and my department, Mass Communications, was willing and able to provide space for our summer 2010 meeting,” Lauters said. “Hopefully, this means we can have a large, fan-and-academic meeting that will be fun and fruitful for everyone who participates.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder on Twitter

Laura Ingalls Wilder is all over the web with her own web sites, blogs, and email fan groups. Now she even has two identities over at Twitter: HalfPintIngalls, which is sassy and smarmy and enjoying a bit of notoriety, and the more sedate LIngallsWilder, where curiously she seems to be chatting with no one but her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane.

When “Laura” Was Sweet Sixteen

Poking around on the People magazine web site for a story about the Guthrie show that quoted Melissa Gilbert (they don’t seem to have posted it), I came across this cover story from 1980 on Ms. Gilbert. Kind of spooky and interesting and hilarious all at once.

More Guthrie Press

Some more press on the Guthrie show here, courtesy of the Associated Press. This blog entry seems to be cobbled together from other news reports, but it’s worth looking at for the photos.

(The bangs! The loose, braidless hair! Mercy!)

Tickets on Sale!

Buy your tickets to Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater’s musical production of Little House on the Prairie, featuring Melissa Gilbert as Caroline Ingalls. Locals can visit the box office; others can purchase by phone. Previews begin July 26, and opening night is August 15.

Online tickets available tomorrow at 10 AM.

More Laura Ingalls Wilder Haiku

I think it’s time for some more Haiku, don’t you?

The corncob was sweet
But there’s a new doll in town.
Button-eyed Charlotte.

“I’ve got to,” Charles said.
Down into the well he went.
Stupid Mr. Scott.

We did not slide, Pa.
But we rolled. Say, Mary, why
Is Pa’s back shaking?

Hair loose, nose bloodied.
Lost washing, breathless ponies.
Cousin Lena ROCKS.

Pa had only this:
A potato on an ax
De Smet’s on its knees.

Snug in the cutter
The man of the place is just
The boy with the reins